WIPR survey: Readers divided on impact of America Invents Act
WIPR readers are divided on the impact the America Invents Act (AIA) has had on the patent landscape for inventors and businesses in the US.
September 16 marked five years since the AIA was signed into law by President Barack Obama.
The aim of the AIA was to provide patent reform and change the patent system from ‘first to invent’ to ‘first to file’. It also introduced post-grant opposition procedures, among other changes.
Responding to WIPR’s latest survey, readers were divided 50/50 on the success of the AIA.
One reader said: “Inter partes review has opened up a strong path to mitigate risks.”
Another said: “A significant improvement of the patent landscape is not noteworthy, given that there is no longer a venue to contest (during prosecution) the similarity of one’s application to a competitor’s, as had been with ‘ante-dating’ in the ‘first to invent’ system.”
They added that there was a need to educate applicants on the viability and importance of third-party observations, where cited references warrant inclusion in the examiner’s consideration when evaluating an application’s patentability.
Another respondent applauded the post-grant review procedures as “simple and relatively cost-effective”.
However, they added that the procedures were only necessary “because of the entirely sub-standard examination offered by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)—an average of 4.5 hours searching per application”.
“Over the past ten to 20 years the USPTO has issued some truly terrible and invalid patents,” said the respondent.
“Previously, due to the strong presumption of validity of issued patents and the absurd cost of US litigation, the owners of such patents could force alleged infringers to spend millions of dollars defending patent lawsuits,” they added.
The respondent concluded: “If the USPTO could actually examine applications properly, the post-grant review procedures introduced by the AIA would never have been necessary at all.”
A USPTO spokesperson referred to a blog post published today which commemorated five years of the AIA.
The blog is written by Dana Robert Colarulli, director of the office of governmental affairs at the USPTO.
Among other things, he said the USPTO has reduced the patent application backlog by nearly 30% since 2009, "speeding up examination including introducing a fast-track option with discounts for small entities, and leveraging the increased financial stability and fee-setting authority provided by the act to re-invest user fees into increasing quality under director [Michelle] Lee’s Enhanced Patent Quality Initiative".
WIPR has published several articles on the AIA on our website (see a selection below).
For our latest survey question, we ask: “At the AIPPI conference in Milan earlier in September, a UK lawyer said Brexit means ‘total chaos’ for IP. Do you agree?”
Tech transfer and the America Invents Act
America Invents Act: what has changed three years on
