The long awaited reforms to embetter the patent system were realized by the America Invents Act (AIA). The act was signed into law by President Obama on the 16th of September, 2011. According to a White House press release published on the same day, AIA will help businesses and inventors in the following ways:
The “first-to-file” system will be brought into action starting 16th of March, 2013. According to this system, a patent’s priority date will be decided based on its filing date. This means, a patent application which is filed first would be given priority over an application which is filed later. This is applicable on patent applications filed after the mentioned date. Previously, in order to grant a patent the publicly available texts such as publications were reviewed to see the authenticity and novelty of the invention. Now, there are prior art searches conducted to verify the novelty of the inventions.
Under the current law, a “micro-entity” status has been added wherein the micro-entity can be an inventor or a university meeting certain criteria. A micro-entity is eligible to a discount of 75 percent in the patent fee or in the patent application. Some of the major concerns raised regarding the AIA are:
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