The U.S. is on the verge of the largest shift the patent system has seen in decades as President Barack Obama prepares to sign a bill that will transform the process from a first-to-invent system to a first-to-file system.
The "America Invents Act," six years in the making, passed the Senate last week in a sweeping 89 to 9 vote accepting the bill, having won House approval in a similarly large landslide in March.
The sweeping reform bill a was crafted in part as a means to get a handle on some 700,000 backlogged patents and put a damper on the trigger-happy patent litigation that some companies use as a weapon against competitors.
The Act presents a means to keep patent spats out of court and may help weed out weak patents through a post-patent challenge period.
However, the first-to-file system also presents risks for innovators in small companies or academic environments where pockets aren’t deep enough to win a race to the patent office and an environment of free and open collaboration might be compromised by the fear that a colleague or competitor could run away with your idea, patent attorney David Dykeman told MassDevice.
Click here to learn more about opportunities and risks in the America Invents Act in MassDevice’s podcast interview with patent attorney David Dykeman.
Or pick from other segments of the interview:
- Main page: Patent attorney David Dykeman breaks down the America Invents Act
- Background on the America Invents Act
- Winners and losers under patent reform
- Pitfalls and windfalls under patent reform
- “File early, file often”
- The post-grant challenge period
- Patent trolls and infringement lawsuits under patent reform
- The Supreme Court’s hand in shaping patent law
- In-house initiatives at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office
- Meet David Dykeman