Patent Attorney Breaks Down Impact of the America Invents Act

msmoriarty writes "As you probably heard, on Friday the Obama administration signed the America Invents Act, which changed our system to 'first to file.' Support for the bill itself was split in the tech industry: Microsoft and IBM (among others) supported the act, Google and Apple opposed it. Redmondmag asked a patent attorney to explain in detail the act and what impact he thinks it will have on the tech industry. According to him, there are still many open questions. From the article: 'The Act has not accomplished [first to file] harmonization in a straightforward or unambiguous way. For example, it is not clear whether a prior use or offer for sale of an invention by an inventor or joint inventor within a year of the date of filing would render the invention unpatentable.' He also said that the act clearly favors larger corporations, and he doubts it will speed up the patent process itself, which was one of its intended benefits."

Re:Simple

[elsurexiste]

Microsoft supported it, Google opposed it. What more proof do we need that this act is evil?

OK

I strongly recommend reading it all because otherwise we risk to draw uneducated conclusions... we really need to take some time to fully research the subject...

If that's not ironic, I don't know what it is.

"the act clearly favors larger corporations"

[Anonymous Coward]

"the act clearly favors larger corporations"

Well, duh! Isn't that the sole purpose of all acts and reforms? More advantages for larger corporations?

Meh

[Aerorae]

Life goes on. Corps always win in our system as it is. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

SO FOR GODS SAKE PEOPLE STOP THE GRATUITOUS LAMENTING

why favor large corporations?

[vlm]

He also said that the act clearly favors larger corporations

Why? He never explained why. I realize they are the boogy-man now, so any time you want to imply something is bad, you imply its good for the big corporations, but the logic seems to be missing. I guess the argument is something like submarine patents will be harder to implement, but ...

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

But Apple opposed it as well. Does that cancel out Google or does it add credence to Google is going evil. I'm so torn.

Re:"the act clearly favors larger corporations"

[DCFusor]

Unfortunately, that does seem to be the case. Funny the cognitive dissonance when they mention how it's *small* companies that create most of the jobs and innovation. There is no way you can now break into the big boys club. They just patent everything they can, and while they hate each other -- they can cross-license at nominal or no cost. But a little guy with one patent who starts eating into their market share will always find they've patented about 10 obvious things they can use against him, as the days of anything being simple, covered by just one patent, are long gone. As durrr said above, we're all fucked.

Re:why favor large corporations?

[Baloroth]

But, unless he omitted something, the "submarine prior art" can't be used to invalidate a patent, nor to claim the patent for yourself. All it does is make you (or someone you sell the "trade secret" to), immune to being sued. I'm quite confused how that is a bad thing. It doesn't give as much incentive to publicize the technique, to be used by everyone after the patent period, but given the way patent law was before, that didn't really help before. Basically, it seems that this just makes a company, who doesn't publish their art, immune to patent suits, as long as they were using the art in question, but they cannot invalidate a patent someone else filed. Again, this is unles I am completely misreading what he said or he omitted a major point.

The only way this benefits large companies more than small companies is because large companies can afford to maintain and develop more such art. That is all. So basically it benefits large companies the same way as patent law in general does: they can maintain more of it. All in all, however, this (part of the) reform seems good, since trolls can't file for a patent afterwards and sue some company who was actually using it before them, but didn't publish it.