Patent Reform Act of 2011

Floor Speech

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Utah for his strong statement of support for the America Invents Act, a bill that is, at its heart, all about moving our economy forward. When we think about the brass tacks of our country, we think about ideas, we think about inventions. It was our inventors who developed the light bulb, the assembly line, the Internet, the iPod, and, of course, my 15-year-old daughter's favorite invention, Facebook. This all came from our great country.

I wish to comment, briefly--I know Senator Rockefeller has an important issue to talk about, the issue we have just been discussing.

First of all, we have heard from stakeholders from across the spectrum--from high tech and life sciences to universities and small inventors--in support of the transition to the first-to-file system.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a list of supporters of the transition to the first-to-file system that is contained in the America Invents Act.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:

Supporters of the First-to-File Transition

AdvaMed; American Bar Association; American Council on Education; American Intellectual Property Law Association; Association of American Medical Colleges; Association for Competitive Technology; Association of American Universities; Association of Public and Land-grant Universities; Association of University Technology Managers; BASF, the Chemical Company; Biotechnology Industry Organization; Business Software Alliance; Caterpillar; Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform; Council on Governmental Relations; Gary Michelson, Independent Inventor; Genentech; Intellectual Property Owners Association; Louis J. Foreman, Enventys, independent inventor; National Association of Manufacturers; Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council; and Software & Information Industry Association.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, we have heard also on the floor that there is, as Senator Hatch mentioned, strong support throughout the Senate for this change. In fact, Commerce Secretary Locke emphasizes that support in a column appearing in the Hill newspaper today. He states:

[P]atent reform adopts the ``first-inventor-to-file'' standard as opposed to the current ``first-to-invent'' standard. First inventor to file is used by the rest of the world Ðand would be good for U.S. businesses, providing a more transparent and cost-effective process that puts them on a level playing field. .....

I could not agree more. Small businesses, independent investors, and stakeholders across the spectrum support this important transition.

I wish to mention one other aspect of this system. With the current first-to-invent system, when two patents are filed around the same time for the same invention, it also creates problems. It means the applicants must go through an arduous and expensive process called an interference to determine which applicant will be awarded the patent.

Small inventors rarely, if ever, win interference proceedings because the rules for interferences are often stacked in favor of companies that can spend more money. We believe this needs to change. There was a recent article about this in the Washington Post in which David Kappos, the Director of the Patent Office and Under Secretary for Intellectual Property, described the current system is similar to parking your car in a metered space and having someone else come up and say they had priority for that space and then having your car towed. Instead, we need a system in which, if you are the first to pull in and pay your fee, you can park there and no one else can claim it is their space.

The America Invents Act would create that system. It transitions our patent system from a first-to-invent system to a first-inventor-to-file system. By simply using the file date of an application to determine the true inventor, the bill increases the speed of a patent application process, while also rewarding novel, cutting-edge inventions.

A first-to-file system creates more certainty for inventors looking to see if an idea has already been patented. At the same time, the bill still provides a safe harbor of 1 year for inventors to go out and market their inventions before having to file for their patent. This grace period is one of the reasons our Nation's top research universities, such as the University of Minnesota, support the bill. The grace period protects professors who discuss their inventions with colleagues or publish them in journals before filing their patent application.

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