Intellectual Property Directions

I remember a cartoon I saw many years ago. It showed several inventors waiting on a bench outside the patent examiner’s office. Each inventor had an odd-shaped package on his lap, with bulges and protrusions and wrapped in brown paper and string to hide the details of the contents. Two adjacent inventors are holding identical packages and are eyeing each other with great suspicion. Welcome to “first-to-file”.

The United States’ virtually unique “first-to-invent” rule is likely to change if and when patent reform makes its way through Congress. Of the several reforms in the package to argue about, FTF is one that gets my vote without much worry. Some people suggest that FTF favors large companies over small entities, but I don’t see it, except in one very narrow sense.

Arguably, a large company has the resources to “run” to the patent office as soon as an invention is ready for patenting while a small entity has to shepherd its resources. I suppose that’s true, but my experience with both types of companies suggests that big companies, with many more potential patents to evaluate, are no less concerned about budgets than are small companies; have more bureaucratic red-tape to get past; and are less enamoured of any one invention (given the many technology areas they work in). In a large company, getting the okay to patent ”your” invention is often one battle in an internecine battle for resources. In a small company the focus is typically on the key technologies supporting one product or product line and management decisions can be made on a dime.

The reality is that patent interferences are relatively rare and, if memory serves, the senior party (the first to file) wins most of the time. Moving to FTF, aside from bringing us into alignment with the rest of the world, would eliminate a rarely used and costly procedure that usually ends up giving the patent to the first to file anyway. Without First-to-Invent, the need for evidence-quality lab notebooks is eliminated and without interferences the potential for a surprise legal expense is eliminated.

The one impact that FTF will have on both large and small businesses is that it increases the pressure to file a provisional application as soon as possible and then finish any improvements and/or market evaluation within the one year lifetime of the provisional application. But even this impact is minimal in its practical application. Under First-to-Invent it is a risky strategy to postpone filing a provisional application as soon as possible since it opens you up to the argument (in an interference proceeding) that you did not file in a timely manner. Our patent system is designed to reward inventors who share their inventions with society with the temporary “patent monopoly”; not filing in a timely manner (i.e., once your invention is reduced to practice) is just another weapon in the senior party’s arsenal.

If you’ve been paying attention to your IP development process and diligent in reducing your inventions to practice under First-to-Invent then you have little to fear from First-to-File. In general, interferences are rare and I see the odds of you losing a patent under FTF compared to winning a patent at just about 50:50.