US Patent Reform Planning

    At the lower house of the US parliament, patent reform hearings began . Two deputies initiated this procedure: Howard Berman, the new chairman of the parliamentary subcommittee on Internet and intellectual property, as well as Rick Boucher. According to them, the modern US patent system promotes the registration of low quality patents, and also encourages numerous patent infringement proceedings. Reform should address these shortcomings. Moreover, these shortcomings arose as a result of the past reform.

    In the early 1980s, the process for legalizing patents and handling complaints of patent infringement was changed so that all appeals began to be heard in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, CAFC. In addition, ten years later, Congress changed the structure of fees in the US Patent Office and all procedural costs began to be paid by patent applicants. “Now it’s become apparent that these seemingly routine procedural changes have led to the most dramatic changes in patent rules and practice since 1836,” said Adam Jaffe, professor of economics at Brandeis University, during a hearing at parliament.

    The fact is that CAFC interpreted the patent law in such a way as to maximize the ease of obtaining patents and their further protection. At the same time, opportunities to challenge the validity of patents have become much more complicated. The new fee system has made it possible for the Patent Office to grant as many patents as possible, so that the proportion of approved applications has grown to 85%. For comparison, in the European Patent Office this share is 72.5%, while in Japan it is only 44.5%.

    As a result, Jaffe says, the patent system has evolved from a shield that should protect inventors into a grenade that companies throw at their competitors.

    The patent reform proposed by Berman and Bushehr provides for administrative changes to the patent office and CAFC. The main thing is that for these structures financial interest in approval of patent applications should disappear. Decisions should be made without financial pressure, but based solely on scientific knowledge.

    In addition, as part of the reform, it is proposed to introduce a procedure for public review and comment on all patent applications, and applications should be published on the Internet 18 months after their filing. Anyone can post a comment directly on the website of the patent office.

    And the most important point of patent reform is the proposal to explicitly prohibit patenting of software and business methods. As you know, software has been patented in the USA since the end of the 80s. In general, the Berman-Bushehr initiative is actively supported by technology companies (almost all suffer from patent claims from unknown "inventors" and small firms), but this last point may cause dissatisfaction.

    In the coming weeks, Berman and Bushehr will introduce the Patents Depend on Quality Act of 2006 (PDQ Act), followed by an additional hearing on this issue.

    Also popular now: