By Donald Zuhn --
According to a recent Reuters report, the Senate will take up consideration of patent reform legislation when it returns from a break next week. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said the Senate would take up patent reform after the break, and Assistant Senate Democratic Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) expressed confidence that the bill would be passed; Democratic aides said that the plan was to get to the bill by March 14. The IPO Daily News noted that if the Senate takes up the bill, it would be the first time in six years that a version of the bill had reached the Senate floor. The House passed a much different patent reform bill in September 2007 (see "Patent 'Reform' Bill Passes House of Representatives").
As reported to the Senate, the bill (S. 23) would, among other things:
Sec. 2 - Define the "effective filing date" of a claimed invention as the actual filing date of the application, thus establishing a first-to-file system to replace the current first-to-invent system. Establish one-year grace period for inventors to file an application after certain disclosures of the claimed invention by the inventor or another who obtained the subject matter from the inventor. Revise provisions concerning novelty and nonobvious subject matter. Replace interference proceedings with derivation proceedings.
Sec. 3 - Modify requirements regarding the oath or declaration required of an inventor. Allow a person to whom an inventor has assigned (or is under an obligation to assign) an invention to make an application for patent.
Sec. 4 - Set forth a damages determination procedure that requires the court or jury to consider only court-identified methodologies and factors.
Sec. 5 - Allow a person who is not the patent owner to request to cancel as unpatentable one or more claims of patent by filing a petition with the USPTO to institute: (1) post-grant review on any ground that could be raised under specified provisions relating to invalidity of the patent or any claim (up to nine months after issuance), and (2) inter partes review (replaces inter partes reexamination procedures) on specified novelty and nonobvious subject matter grounds based on prior art consisting of patents and printed publications (after post-grant review). Allow any person, at any time, to cite to the USPTO: (1) prior art bearing on the patentability of a claim, and (2) statements of the patent owner filed in a proceeding before a federal court or the USPTO in which the patent owner took a position on the scope of any claim of a particular patent.
Sec. 8 - Require a district court to transfer a civil patent action if another venue is clearly more convenient than the venue in which the action is pending.
Sec. 9 - Authorize the Director to set or adjust by rule any fee established or charged by the USPTO. Establish $400 fee for original patent applications filed non-electronically.
Sec. 12 - Define the term "micro entity" for both an assigned and unassigned application.
Sec. 15 - Prohibit using a failure to disclose the best mode as a basis on which any claim of a patent may be canceled or held invalid or otherwise unenforceable.
A full summary of the bill can be obtained on the Library of Congress' THOMAS website.
For additional information on this topic, please see:
• "Reaction to Senate Patent Reform Bill (S. 23)," February 9, 2011
• "Judiciary Committee Votes on Patent Reform Bill," February 3, 2011
Just because they call it “reform” doesn’t mean it is. Patent reform is a fraud on America.
What it will do is help large corporations maintain their monopolies and kill their small entity and startup competitors and with them the jobs they would have created. According to recent studies by the Kauffman Foundation and economists at the U.S. Census Bureau, “startups aren’t everything when it comes to job growth. They’re the only thing.” This bill is a wholesale slaughter of US jobs.
Please see http://truereform.piausa.org/ for a different/opposing view on patent reform.
Posted by: staff | February 23, 2011 at 07:58 AM
What, prey tell, is so fraudulent here staff?
And just what makes it so much easier for the big corp to pound on the little corp?
I'm just not seeing those provisions. Maybe you can point them out.
Posted by: 6 | February 24, 2011 at 02:13 PM