Patent system streamlined
Agency will add examiners to reduce backlog; shifts to ‘first-to-file’
ALEXANDRIA, Va. – President Barack Obama signed into law Friday a major overhaul of the nation’s patent system to ease the way for inventors to bring their products to market.
Passed in a rare display of congressional bipartisanship, the America Invents Act is the first significant change in patent law since 1952. It has been hailed as a milestone that will spur innovation and create jobs.
The bill is meant to ensure that the patent office has the money to expedite the application process. It now takes an average of three years to get a patent approved.
“Somewhere in that stack of applications could be the next technological breakthrough, the next miracle drug,” Obama said. “We should be making it easier and faster to turn new ideas into jobs.”
The president signed the bill after touring Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., where he examined student projects, including a wheelchair that responds to brain waves.
Some questions and answers on the new America Invents Act:
Q. Why are there so many applications sitting around the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office?
A. It’s primarily because of insufficient manpower and funding. The patent office doesn’t have enough examiners to keep up with the filings. The agency has a backlog of 1.2 million patents pending, including nearly 700,000 applications alone that are waiting to be reviewed. The agency is funded entirely by fees but Congress has tapped its funding stream over the years.
Q. How will the America Invents Act make the process better?
A. In several ways. The agency will be able to set its own fees and, with congressional oversight, keep all the money it collects. Plans call for hiring between 1,500 and 2,000 examiners during the budget year ending Sept. 30, 2012. Congress currently sets the office’s annual budget and the fees it can charge. David Kappos, the patent office director, told Congress that change would raise an additional $300 million, which could be used to increase staffing and upgrade computers and other information technology.
Applicants also can pay extra for a faster review process that is supposed to cut the average wait to one year, down from three. Small businesses would get a discount on the fee for that special process. New guidelines clarify and tighten standards for issuing patents. The law also switches the U.S. from a “first-to-invent” system to a “first-to-file” system, a change designed to help reduce costly legal battles and even the playing field with other industrialized nations.
Q. What about the backlog?
A. Kappos said the changes could help cut that in half, to 350,000 applications.
Q. How is it that Democrats and Republicans in Congress were able to agree on overhauling the patent process when they can’t seem to agree on much of anything lately?
A. Both parties have long recognized that the patent system was inadequate to meet the needs of 21st-century innovators and the groups pressing for change represent the entire political spectrum, from manufacturers and drug companies with ties to Republicans to high-tech companies and academics more often associated with Democrats. This year, the stars were aligned after several court decisions settled litigation questions that had held up the bill. Increased concerns about losing the patenting edge to China and other foreign competitors also were factors.