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America Invents Act Signed into Law

For important information on what you need to know and do in regards to the America Invents Act:

White Paper - America Invents Act

What Inventors and Innovators need to know about the new America Invents Act (www.aminn.org)

The American Patent System is officially changing from a “First to Invent” system to a “First to File” system. Many countries throughout the world use the “First to File” system and the goal of this law is to bring America in line with the rest of the world in regards to patent law. Further objectives of the law are to clear the backlog of patent applications that have piled up at the patent office and to more completely fund the patent office. Although the latter will be of benefit to Americans the switch to “First to File” may very well come at the expense of small businesses and inventors. The major problem is that a lot of small businesses and inventors do not have readily available the thousands of dollars necessary to pursue a patent. It is a big investment for them and they need to test market products and insure the manufacturing process is workable and cost effective before filing for a patent on an invention. Most small businesses and inventors do not have the dollars available to file multiple patent applications. For a lot of them the patent application process is a big investment of time and money. For this reason the America Invents Law may very well be an obstacle to the growth of small business in America rather than the job creating act it was intended to be.