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This report argues that reforms of the U.S. patent system have suceeded in limiting the competition of ideas, discouraging innovation, and ultimately reducing U.S. competitiveness.
'Daniel Cahoy and Lynda Oswald have brought together some of the country's most prominent patent scholars outside the legal discipline. From the LeahySmith America Invents Act to recent court cases from the Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit, this timely, informative and well-edited volume examines the latest changes in US patent law and their impact on business strategy. The book is a must-read for anybody who wants to learn more deeply about the ever-increasing role of patents in the business environment.' Peter K. Yu, Drake University Law School, US Within the complex global economy, patents function as indispensable tools for fostering and protecting innovation. This fascinating volume offers a comprehensive perspective on the US patent system, detailing its many uses and outlining several critical legislative, administrative and judicial reforms that impact business strategy. The expert contributors to this book provide an overview of how the US patent system functions today and describe how recent changes affect firms and individual inventors. Topics discussed include the drivers of intellectual property policy; recent revisions to the patent application process in terms of the new first-to-file regime, inequitable conduct, and allowable subject matter; and changes to patent enforcement and infringement related to the Federal Circuit's special role and post-grant review. Contributors address recent legislation such as the 2011 America Invents Act, which enacted some of the most significant patent reforms in decades. This examination of the US patent system highlights some of the most important issues for business. It will serve as an important tool for both policymakers and business leaders, and will also interest students and professors of business and management studies, innovation studies and business law.
The U.S. patent system is in an accelerating race with human ingenuity and investments in innovation. In many respects the system has responded with admirable flexibility, but the strain of continual technological change and the greater importance ascribed to patents in a knowledge economy are exposing weaknesses including questionable patent quality, rising transaction costs, impediments to the dissemination of information through patents, and international inconsistencies. A panel including a mix of legal expertise, economists, technologists, and university and corporate officials recommends significant changes in the way the patent system operates. A Patent System for the 21st Century urges creation of a mechanism for post-grant challenges to newly issued patents, reinvigoration of the non-obviousness standard to quality for a patent, strengthening of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, simplified and less costly litigation, harmonization of the U.S., European, and Japanese examination process, and protection of some research from patent infringement liability.
Congressional interest in patent reform has increased as the patent system becomes more significant to U.S. industry. Patent ownership is perceived as an incentive to the technological advancement that leads to economic growth. Yet, this augmented attention to patents has been accompanied by persistent concerns about the fairness and effectiveness of the current system. Several studies, including those by the National Academy of Sciences and the Federal Trade Commission, recommended reform of the patent system to address perceived deficiencies in the operation of the patent regime. This book provides an overview of current patent reform issues including a summary of the structure of the current patent system and the role of patents in innovation policy. Also discussed are patent quality, the high costs of patent litigation, international harmonisation, and speculation in patents, which have motivated the reform proposals.
In recent years, business leaders, policymakers, and inventors have complained to the media and to Congress that today's patent system stifles innovation instead of fostering it. But like the infamous patent on the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, much of the cited evidence about the patent system is pure anecdote--making realistic policy formation difficult. Is the patent system fundamentally broken, or can it be fixed with a few modest reforms? Moving beyond rhetoric, Patent Failure provides the first authoritative and comprehensive look at the economic performance of patents in forty years. James Bessen and Michael Meurer ask whether patents work well as property rights, and, if not, what institutional and legal reforms are necessary to make the patent system more effective. Patent Failure presents a wide range of empirical evidence from history, law, and economics. The book's findings are stark and conclusive. While patents do provide incentives to invest in research, development, and commercialization, for most businesses today, patents fail to provide predictable property rights. Instead, they produce costly disputes and excessive litigation that outweigh positive incentives. Only in some sectors, such as the pharmaceutical industry, do patents act as advertised, with their benefits outweighing the related costs. By showing how the patent system has fallen short in providing predictable legal boundaries, Patent Failure serves as a call for change in institutions and laws. There are no simple solutions, but Bessen and Meurer's reform proposals need to be heard. The health and competitiveness of the nation's economy depend on it.
Congressional interest in patent policy and possible patent reform has expanded as the importance of intellectual property to innovation has increased. Patent ownership is perceived as an incentive to the technological advancement that leads to economic growth. However, growing interest in patents has been accompanied by persistent concerns about the fairness and effectiveness of the current system. Several recent studies, including those by the National Academy of Sciences and the Federal Trade Commission, have recommended patent reform to address perceived deficiencies in the operation of the patent regime. Other experts maintain that major alterations in existing law are unnecessary and that the patent process can, and is, adapting to technological progress. The Patent Act of 2005, H.R. 2795, introduced in June 2005, would work significant legal reforms to the patent system. Among the more notable of these changes are a shift to a first-inventor-to-file priority system; substantive and procedural modifications to the patent law doctrines of willful infringement and inequitable conduct; and adoption of post-issuance opposition proceedings, prior user rights, and pre-issuance publication of all pending applications. Several of these proposals have been the subject of discussion within the patent community for many years, but others are more novel propositions. Pending legislation attempts to address several issues of concern including the quality of issued patents, the expense and complexity of patent litigation, harmonization of U.S. patent law with the laws of our leading trading partners, potential abuses committed by patent speculators, and the special needs of individual inventors, universities, and small firms with respect to the patent system. In addition, although the existing patent statute in large measure applies the same basic rules to different sorts of inventions, regardless of the technological field of that invention, the patent system is widely believed to impact different industries in varying ways. The provisions of H.R. 2795 would arguably work the most sweeping reforms to the U.S. patent system since the nineteenth century. However, many of these proposals, such as pre-issuance publication, prior user rights, and oppositions, have already been implemented in U.S. law to a more limited extent. These and other reforms, such as the first-inventor-to-file priority system and elimination of the best mode requirement, also reflect the decades-old patent practices of Europe, Japan, and our other leading trading partners. Other knowledgeable observers are nonetheless concerned that certain of these proposals would weaken the patent right, thereby diminishing needed incentives for innovation. Some also believe that changes of this magnitude, occurring at the same time, do not present the most prudent course for the patent system. Patent reform therefore confronts Congress with difficult legal, practical, and policy issues, but also with apparent possibilities for altering and possibly improving the legal regime that has long been recognized as an engine of innovation within the U.S. economy.
The United States patent system has become sand rather than lubricant in the wheels of American progress. Such is the premise behind this provocative and timely book by two of the nation's leading experts on patents and economic innovation. Innovation and Its Discontents tells the story of how recent changes in patenting--an institutional process that was created to nurture innovation--have wreaked havoc on innovators, businesses, and economic productivity. Jaffe and Lerner, who have spent the past two decades studying the patent system, show how legal changes initiated in the 1980s converted the system from a stimulator of innovation to a creator of litigation and uncertainty that threatens the innovation process itself. In one telling vignette, Jaffe and Lerner cite a patent litigation campaign brought by a a semi-conductor chip designer that claims control of an entire category of computer memory chips. The firm's claims are based on a modest 15-year old invention, whose scope and influenced were broadened by secretly manipulating an industry-wide cooperative standard-setting body. Such cases are largely the result of two changes in the patent climate, Jaffe and Lerner contend. First, new laws have made it easier for businesses and inventors to secure patents on products of all kinds, and second, the laws have tilted the table to favor patent holders, no matter how tenuous their claims. After analyzing the economic incentives created by the current policies, Jaffe and Lerner suggest a three-pronged solution for restoring the patent system: create incentives to motivate parties who have information about the novelty of a patent; provide multiple levels of patent review; and replace juries with judges and special masters to preside over certain aspects of infringement cases. Well-argued and engagingly written, Innovation and Its Discontents offers a fresh approach for enhancing both the nation's creativity and its economic growth.

Patent Law Revision

United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights

Published: 1967

Total Pages: 916


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Considers S. 1042, similar S. 1691, S. 2164, and S. 2597, and related bills S. 2 and S. 1377, to revise the Patent Act to simplify the patent award process and to establish procedures to make patents less vulnerable to court challenges.