A new bill before the House and Senate seeks to amend the AIA to provide for a more forgiving one-year grace period in which an inventor may disclose their invention before filing a patent application. While the AIA has such a grace period, it is limited to disclosures of the claimed invention, and it is unclear as to whether the existing grace period applies in a number of scenarios. For example, if a third party publishes a modified version of the inventor’s original disclosure, that may be a prior art reference under existing law.
source: Maier & Maier, PLLC
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