Patent Reform Act of 2009 - Proposed Changes - First-to-file

First-to-file

All versions of the Patent Reform Act of 2009 that were proposed would have switched U.S. patent priority from the existing "first-to-invent" system to a "first-to-file" system. The proposed legislation modified the prior art definitions of the patent law. Prior art that barred a patent would have included all public uses, sales, offers for sale, publications, and other disclosures available to the public as of the filing date, other than publications by the inventor within one year of filing (inventor's "grace period"), whether or not a third party also filed a patent application. Applicants that did not publish their inventions prior to filing would have received no grace period. The proceedings at the U.S. Patent Office for resolving priority contests among near-simultaneous inventors who both filed applications ("interference proceedings") would have been repealed, because priority would have been determined based on filing date. The legislation proposed creating a new administrative proceeding—called a "derivation" proceeding—that would ensure that the first person to file the application was actually a true inventor and that the application was not derived from another inventor.