Disclaimer - IANAL, I just work for them. In fact I work for a law firm that does only intellectual property law.
This source article is the best damn roundup of some of the changes to the U.S patent system that big buisness is trying to make.
Shorter version - changes in the patent filing system are designed to screw over the smallest inventors - and you in the end.
More on the flip.
Late last month, shortly before the U.S. Congress shut down for its summer recess, the Senate Judiciary Committee's Intellectual Property subcommittee held an unusual hearing -- unusual because the only committee member attending the hearing was the chairman, Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah. Why would such a prestigious committee hold a hearing in Washington attended by only one member? To slam through some controversial legislation, of course. Senator Hatch was trying to pass a new law "reforming" the U.S. patent system and apparently felt it would all go much more smoothly without the presence of the other committee members. And it might have gone smoothly, except someone in the press noticed the unusual hearing and decided to attend, essentially scotching the intended markup of the bill a week later and passage just as an unwary Congress was heading home.
Lord save us from patent reform.
Amen! As bad as tort reform is, I view IP law reform as just as much of an evil. "Reform" is not cutting away the bureacracy or enabling access to all parties, but making access to the system more restrictive to and restricted from private individuals.
The bill at hand, which will take another shot at passage after the current Congressional recess, is intended to discourage frivolous patent lawsuits, which are reportedly ruining the days of big companies all over America, thus denying the rest of us the fruits of those patents -- new stuff. That would be fine if most of our new stuff came from big companies, but it doesn't. Most patents aren't issued to big companies, but to smaller companies and to individual inventors. Patent reform for the most part won't help those groups and will, in fact, hurt them.
See, I just said that.
The primary principles of patent reform are switching the U.S. system from "first to invent" to "first to file" by replacing legal challenges to patents with a more administrative challenge process, and by practically eliminating injunctions through which a patent holder forces an infringer to stop using his intellectual property.
Much of the rest of the world already uses "first to file" patent systems. Of course, much of the rest of the world also ignores or gleefully violates patent law. "First to file" gives the advantage to any organization that has a good administrative system in place. Absent-minded inventors lose in this system, which also encourages patenting anything and everything just in case.
And to be blunt - the WIPO, the World Intellectal Property Organization treaty - is honored more in its breach than in its compliance in a number of countries that are signatories. You might recognize some of them - China, India, South Korea . . (Taiwan doesn't appear because of One China politics, but that allows them free reign to openly copy patented devices with few, if any, consequences.)
WIPO is the big reasoning behind the first-to-file move. Essentially, the large companies have decided that the world would be best governed by an International World Patent system. Not because they belive in World Government, but it simplifies their task of consoldating effort in IP enforcement and subversion when it suits them.
Big companies with patent departments will continue to staff those departments with lawyers, whether they are called that or not. Little companies and individual inventors without patent departments tend to be represented by lawyers who work on contingency -- who accept the financial risk of pursuing the case in return for a share of any award the inventor gets in compensation for the infringement. While there are some lawyers who are the patent equivalents of ambulance chasers, most lawyers won't take patent cases they aren't pretty darned sure they can win, which would seem to not be frivolous cases at all.
So moving to an administrative challenge system eliminates lawyers, yes, but only for small inventors.
Finally there is the elimination of injunctions except under extreme circumstances. I find this part of the bill especially interesting because it seems to effectively allow infringement under almost any circumstance, reducing what is supposed to be a crime into more of a forced license -- forced on the patent holder. If a company infringes my patent and I can't get an injunction prohibiting them from using my intellectual property, that means anyone can use any patented technology, and all that's left to be worked out is the license fee.
Remember what I said about companies that honor the WIPO agreements more in the breach than in their compliance?
Incidentally, that law firm I work for? 80% of our money comes from ultra-large to large companies using us in addition to their own patent departments to wage multinational war or to file the constant blizzard of paper that has the USPTO backlogged 2 years. The other 20% isn't small inventors - it's just the merely huge to the upper end of the small business sector (firms of 50 employees or more) doing the same things. I'll also note the 80/20 figure is in line with the rest of the law practices in in the U.S.; a recent survey amongst all law firms reported that they all make 80% or mor of their money from large companies. (can i find a link nooooooo . . sorry)
If the current administration & GOP Congress is a noxious rotting disease on our society, the slow corruption of the patent and trademark system is one of the quiet metastasiziations in the 6 other organs. This is killing us.