Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Patent Attorney Breaks Down Impact of the America Invents Act

Posted by Unknown on from the ensuring-patent-lawyers-have-work dept.

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."

3 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Simple by Mensa+Babe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Microsoft supported it, Google opposed it. What more proof do we need that this act is evil? Propably none and even if some then not much. Nevertheless the articles linked in this story even if not bad in content still may be quite hard to follow for anyone who hasn't got an opinion on this matter yet. You can find much more information in the Wikipedia article: Leahy-Smith America Invents Act and even more in the articles linked in the references. I strongly recommend reading it all because otherwise we risk to draw uneducated conclusions from the aspects of this story that may seem obvious but actually are not that obvious for anyone educated in the intellectual property law. Some of the implications of that act would be rather scary so we really need to take some time to fully research the subject and unlike the Redmondmag, the so called "independent voice of the Microsoft IT community", the Wikipedia is actually worth reading.

    --
    Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
    1. Re:Simple by delt0r · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Considering that the rest of the world has had first to file since forever, i think you are wrong. The quality is no worse elsewhere than in the US.

      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
  2. Re:Worst thing for America by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The trolls could do that before. What they could do before, and could not do now, is pre-date the invention by 364 days, so that they could show priority over you. Of course that would be perjury, but the USPTO stopped prosecuting perjury on patent applications when they disbanded their enforcement division for budget reasons in 1974. No prosecutions since then.

    Filing a patent on someone else's invention is still itself perjury. Now, we just have to get them to prosecute that.