Toward a System of Invention Registration: The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act

Abstract:     
The recently enacted Leahy-Smith America Invents Act represents the most significant legislative event affecting patent law and practice in more than half a century. In addressing the AIA, scholars and policymakers have focused with an almost laser-like exclusivity on the AIA's imposition of a first-to-file or first-to-publicly-disclose system, which replaces an over 200-year-old first-to-invent tradition. This myopia, we suggest, overlooks a part of the AIA that could hold a substantially greater potential to jeopardize American innovation, job creation, and economic competitiveness: the imposition of a mechanism for supplemental examination.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 10

Keywords: Patent Law, America Invents Act, Law and Economics, Patent System, Patent Amnesty, Competition, Innovation, Information, Patent Act

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