COMMENTARY: What the U.S. Patent Reform Bill Does and Doesn't Do
' In order to understand what the bill does and does not do, you have to take a look at the patent reform process up to this point. Patent reform was initially proposed to address concerns about the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s grant of flimsy—at times even silly—patents. Business-method patents were also targeted. In his introduction to the Senate version of a patent reform bill, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) referred to the infamous patent for the crustless sandwich. No one wants there to be a patent for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, yet disagreements on the details of various reform bills kept them bottled up in committee year after year.
One thing is clear: Neither house of Congress was interested in making it easier to obtain patents. If that had been the goal, they could have lowered the fees the government charges for them, increased the number of patent office employees to reduce the application backlog, and lowered the standard for patentability. But in the bill to be signed by President Obama this week, some of the user fees charged by the patent office will go up, and new provisions regarding post-patent grant procedures will likely increase the cost and difficulty of obtaining some patents.
If the patent office could keep the fees it charges, it could hire more examiners and reduce the backlog of patents pending. Theoretically, patent quality would also improve. That provision, however, was lost in the fight between the House and Senate versions of the bill. So patent fees can still go into more general government coffers if Congress deems it necessary.
The most interesting components of patent reform actually have little to do with the relative ease of obtaining a patent. The more compelling change is from the first-to-invent system we use in the United States to a first-to-file system, which is used internationally and proposed in both bills. Various inventor and small-business groups oppose such a change, believing that it will put them at a disadvantage in relation to large corporations with the means to file quickly. But proponents say that fights over who invented something first are costly and that it would be easier if we, like the rest of the world, just granted the patent to the first applicant. '
spectrum.ieee.org 
Jim |
