“As the nation’s economy struggles to reduce persistent unemployment and avert a double-dip recession, the Senate on Thursday passed a sweeping overhaul of the American patent system that supporters touted as essential to job-creation but that critics decried as a strike against innovation and a sellout to big business,” John Schmid reports for the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel. “‘My prediction is that fewer new companies will be started and many universities will find it too expensive to patent technologies arising from their research,’ said Carl Gulbrandsen, managing director of the patent licensing arm of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.”

“The view in Washington was diametrically different: The Senate overwhelmingly approved the America Invents Act by a vote of 89-9, making it a rare piece of major economic legislation to achieve bipartisan support,” Schmid reports. “The bill, already passed by the House, was to be sent immediately to President Barack Obama, who has been a strong supporter.”

Schmid reports, “Among those lobbying aggressively for the legislation have been some of the biggest names in American technology, including Apple Inc., Intel Corp., Google Inc., Dell Inc., eBay Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc.”

“It terminates the long-standing practice of honoring the ‘first to invent’ rule and replaces it with a ‘first to file’ system, which would grant patent rights to whoever gets to the Patent Office first,” Schmid reports. “Groups such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the National Small Business Association argue this change disadvantages small players who need time to develop prototypes and line up business partners before spending money on the patent process.”

Much more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Good for Apple in 2011, bad for Apple in 1976?

 

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Fred Mertz" for the heads up.]

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House approves U.S. patent system overhaul bill – June 24, 2011
U.S. House of Representatives unveils fundamental patent overhaul – March 30, 2011