This past Friday at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., President Barack Obama signed into law a patent reform bill known as the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. This represents the first major change in the U.S. patent law since 1952. Proponents of the bill claim that it will help curb frivolous lawsuits, promote innovation, create jobs and allow the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to reduce its backlog by hiring additional personnel.

Obama cited that the law would stimulate U.S. businesses by giving the USPTO the necessary funding to speed up the patent process. The America Invents Act makes the USPTO more self-sufficient by giving it the authority to set its own fees, which proponents say will allow the USPTO hiring of more patent examiners to reduce the huge backlog of pending patent applications.
“Right now, there are about 700,000 applications that haven’t even been opened yet. These are jobs and businesses of the future just waiting to be created,… [S]omewhere in that stack of applications could be the next technological breakthrough” Obama stated.

The America Invents Act makes a notable and significant change to the U.S. Patent law in that it turns the U.S patent system from a first-to-invent system to a first-to-file patent system, which puts the U.S. in line with the patent laws of most foreign countries. As its name suggests, the first-to-file system rewards the first inventor to file a patent application as opposed to the first inventor to conceive the invention. Large corporation such as Microsoft and Apple have been strong supporters of the Act, which they say provides harmonization and improves America’s ability to compete internationally. However, some claim that the Act puts small business at a disadvantage, most likely because their level of resources and sophistication may not allow them to get patent applications on file as fast as larger corporations.