Vitter, Baldwin Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Protect American Inventors, University Researchers

Press Release

U.S. Senators David Vitter (R-La.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) today introduced bipartisan legislation to restore the effective one-year protection, known as the "grace period," for inventors who publicly disclose discoveries prior to filing a patent application on those discoveries. Their legislation, the Grace Period Restoration Act, corrects an unintended oversight in the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA). Congressmen Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) introduced companion legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.

"Inventors and researchers shouldn't be punished for sharing their discoveries. Our legislation would fix this unintended issue so we can protect future young inventors and encourage important collaboration," Senator Vitter said. "We have some impressive research programs going on at Louisiana universities, and our legislation will keep them on the leading edge of innovation."

"Wisconsin has a rich history of investing in science, research and technology -- the building blocks of an innovation economy," said Senator Baldwin. "In order for Wisconsin, and the rest of America, to out-innovate the rest of the world we must protect and strengthen these investments. I'm proud to join this bipartisan coalition to introduce the Grace Period Restoration Act so that our nation's best and brightest are encouraged to create and collaborate, while preserving the patentability of new ideas."

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's regulatory interpretation of the AIA grace period provision, made possible by unintentionally ambiguous language in the statute, effectively eliminates the grace period protection of public disclosures by allowing obvious variants of those disclosures -- subsequent disclosures that have only minor differences from the original invention -- to prevent the original inventor from obtaining a patent on the invention.

Universities, which perform over 60 percent of basic research in the United States, are concerned that the flaws in the AIA grace period provision will discourage their researchers and other inventors from early dissemination of their discoveries in scientific journals, conference proceedings, or other publications. Such early public disclosures of the research results accelerate knowledge dissemination and innovation.

"This important legislation provides research institutions such as Tulane the clearly defined ability to pursue our mission of creating new knowledge through research and discovery and disseminating that knowledge without fear of giving away the very important and valuable right to move our discoveries to the marketplace," said John Christie, Executive Director, Office of Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property Development, Tulane University. "These discoveries become medicines, therapies, vaccines, renewable energy and much more, all of which make better lives and create meaningful jobs for the people of the United States."

"LSU recognizes the importance and value of restoring the Grace Period to the US patent system," said Louisiana State University's Dr. F. King Alexander. "This important legislation will allow researchers across our university to participate in the publication and dissemination of breakthrough discoveries while at the same time preserving the intellectual property rights crucial for our partners to move discoveries from the laboratory to the marketplace."

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