The Patent Reform Bill a.k.a. America Invents Act (AIA) brought significant changes to the American Patent System. The much needed bill was passed by the senate a week ago and officially signed by the President Mr. Barack Obama on 16th September 2011.
The objective of this bill as reiterated by the President is to improve the quality filing; to reduce the patent litigation cost; to bring international harmonization; to generate more revenue for USPTO and most importantly to increase the jobs in the patent industry.
This amendment has brought some significant changes in terms of First to file system, Novelty, Changes in the patent fees structure, Prior Art, Prior user rights etc. The effective date of this law is fairly complicated as different changes would be brought into effect on different dates. The changes that are going to come into immediate effect are:
o Patent fees increased (15%) from September 26th of 2011
o Tech Strategies are considered as a prior art.
o Human organism patents prohibited
o Filing deadline for patent term extension clarified
o Virtual false making provisions changed
o Changed limitations for practitioners misconduct
o Establishment of Micro-entity fee discount (Less than 50 employees)
o End of Best Mode defense
The United States is being transformed into “first to file system” from March 16th, 2013. So Patent Office is expecting a whole bunch of applications before this date by following “first to invent” system. I will come up with the other significant changes soon.
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