The Senate approved a bill by a measure of 89-9 today that will streamline the patent application process. President Obama is expected to sign it into law.
The America Invents Act changes the US Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO procedure so that patents are awarded to the first applicant to submit paperwork to the office, rather than the first applicant to invent the technology. Discrepancies over the exact date of creation of patent-pending devices created a large gridlock due to extended investigation within the patent office. There are currently some 700,000 backdated patent applications.
The new bill represents the first major overhaul of the US patent system since the Patent Act of 1952. Large technology companies like Oracle, Cisco, Google, Dell, and Apple have previously called for patent overhaul and expressed support for the new bill via their partnership, the Coalition for Patent Fairness. But critics are concerned that awarding patents based on date of filing, rather than date of invention, would hamper small companies’ ability to innovate and stay competitive.
“The act will is going to have an impact on the patent process for sure,” said Michael Dergosits of Dergosits & Noah, a firm specializing in patent litigation.
“But I haven’t seen any empirical evidence, nor am I’m convinced that it’ll actually give an advantage to corporations over smaller companies.”
Hiring a patent lawyer, filling out the paperwork, and filing an application are all resource-heavy processes that small companies may not necessarily have the finances or bandwidth to deal with. Larger companies do have those resources and can file faster and more often, the argument goes.
"This is a big corporation patent giveaway that tramples on the rights of small inventors," said Democratic senator Maria Cantwell of Washington. "It is siding with corporate interests against the little guy."
However, the United States is late to come in line with much of the developed world’s patent procedures. The European Patent Convention, signed in 1973 and covering almost every country in Europe, has a first-to-file system.
“The rest of the world has been working this way for decades,” Dergosits noted.
