The US Senate today passed a version of the patent reform bill that had been previously passed by the US House of Representatives. The bill now goes to the White House where President Obama is expected to sign the bill, thereby enacting it into law. The bill, when enacted, will bring US patent law more nearly into harmony with the many countries around the world in which patents are awarded to the first inventor to file. (Heretofore US patent law contained provisions according to which someone who was second to file might sometimes prevail over the first filer, by showing an earlier date of invention.) The bill makes dozens of other changes to US patent law, a few of which are tied to very narrow special interests but most of which will indeed promote the progress of science and useful arts. Some changes will take effect ten days after the President signs the bill. Other changes will take place sixty days later and still other changes will take place a year later. OPLF will discuss various of these changes in future newsletters. OPLF will also offer webinars, some of them free of charge, in coming weeks and months to explain some of these changes in detail. Track I will probably resume.
Some readers will recall that last year the USPTO had announced plans to offer “Track I”, a program according to which a patent applicant could pay $4430 to get any patent application pushed to the front of the line to be examined very quickly. When the federal budget ran into problems early this year, the US Congress dealt with the problems in a way that would have automatically diverted any such $4430 payments away from the USPTO and into Congress’s general revenues to be spent on whatever Congress wished. That action by Congress prompted the USPTO to shelve temporarily the start of Track I.
When today’s bill gets signed by the President, the new law will improve the chances of USPTO getting to keep such fees, and will permit USPTO to establish “large entity” and “small entity” fees for Track I. Applicants that qualify as small entities will be able to purchase Track I status for about $2500, while the price charged to large entities will be about twice that. When USPTO announces that Track I is again to be offered, OPLF will offer a webinar explaining Track I in detail.
Three satellite patent offices to be established
The new law directs USPTO to set up three satellite patent offices within the US. One will be in Detriot (as had previously been tentatively planned by USPTO). The other two will be in as-yet-undetermined cities, chosen to bring about geographic diversity in locations. USPTO is likely to try to pick locations where the cost of living for patent examiners and other employees is lower than that of the Washington metropolitan area. Denver, Colorado and Austin, Texas are among cities that have been mentioned as possible sites.
