House, Senate Push Patent Reform
22 November 2012
The US Senate and House of Representatives are moving forward with patent reform legislation started in the 110th Congress last year, according to Safet Metjahic, an associate at McGuire Woods in New York.
Writing in a firm newsletter, Metjahic said Senate and House bills introduced in early March are similar to legislation introduced in the 110th Congress. The House passed patent reform legislation (H.R. 1908) in the last Congress, and the Senate Judiciary Committee reported companion legislation (S. 1145).
“The Senate and House bills essentially pick up where the 110th Congress left off,” he says. “However, some changes have been made to the Committee-approved bill S.1145 of the 110th Congress in response to concerns from stakeholders.” Notable changes, Metjahic says, include elimination of the requirement that all patent applications publish in 18 months of filing, elimination of the requirement for Applicant Quality Submissions (AQS) and adoption of the House’s (H.R. 1908) approach to implementing current inter partes reexamination processes, instead of creating a new second window post-grant review process.
Some of the provisions that are expected to be hotly contested in this Congress include damage awards in patent litigation cases, inequitable conduct and change to a first-to-file system from the current first-to invent system, says Metjahic.