The Horrible Patent Bill

Recently, both houses of Congress passed the America Invents Act.  It is not yet law, because at least one member of the Senate has put a hold on it, and because there are differences between the House & Senate versions.  With luck, the versions won't be reconcilable, or other Senators will pile on with their holds, and the whole thing will die a well-deserved death.

As an inventor, this bill is of considerable interest to me.  Unfortunately, it is the work product of narrow corporate interests who have influenced the bill to the detriment of independent inventors.  That's important because in case you don't know, independent inventors are the source of most truly revolutionary inventions (corporations focus on evolutionary ones).

Some of the aspects of this bad bill are:

1. Conversion to a 'First-to-File' (FTF) system from the current 'First-to-Invent' system.  This means that the first person to file for a patent application will be considered the true inventor, instead of the first person to conceive of the invention.  This might not seem a big change, but put yourself in the place of the independent inventor with limited resources competing against MegaCorp.  You invented it first, but they filed first.  They get the patent.  How fair is that?
You might ask, why would Congress even consider a change like that?  One reason is that Corporations like it. The second is that Congress wants to bring our intellectual property laws into 'harmonization' with those of other countries, all of whom use FTF.  This might make sense except that the rights of inventors is specifically mentioned in our Constitution, not 'first to filers'.  This clause probably will be overturned by the Supremes, anyway.

2. Stealing fees.  Some years ago, Congress decided that the Patent Office needed to be self-supporting.  Overnight, the fees increased substantially, to the point that government fees alone are now well in excess of $1,000 for a utility patent.  Unfortunately, every year, Congress diverts (i.e. steals) some of that fee income to other purposes.  As a result, the Patent Office does not have the resources to hire enough examiners to cut pendency time below the current three years.  This is one difference between the Senate and House versions.  The Senate version says "thou shall not steal", whereas the House want to maintain fiscal control and dole out whatever funds they deem necessary.

3. Overturning Business Method Patents.
Some years ago, in a landmark case, the Supreme Court ruled that business methods should be patentable.  Previously, they had been specifically excluded.  This opened the flood gates for a whole new category, right at the time when the internet revolution had begun.  One result is that methods were patented that many of the users of the technology such as banks needed to use, and they began to pay significant royalties to the inventors.  The banks didn't like that, and through their lobbying, they had a clause inserted in the bill that allowed for 'post-grant reexamination' of just that kind of patent.
Now, one can dispute whether it was a good idea to allow patentability of business methods in the first place, but once granted and having survived Patent Office and court challenges, this clause would now allow for another route for the users to escape paying royalties.   

All in all, this is a really bad bill, and I hope it will never see the light of day.