Group items tagged

The Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved landmark legislation to overhaul the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a reform effort more than half a decade in the making that aims to improve the quality of patents and curb frivolous litigation.

Excluded from the bill was a controversial amendment, backed by many tech companies, that would have eased the process for initiating an in-house administrative review process at the Patent Office for challenges to patents that have been granted, a measure billed as a less costly alternative to private litigation.

The Senate bill would transition the Patent Office to a so-called first-to-file system, bringing the U.S. system in line with the patent regimes of much of the rest of the world. The shift would confer patent rights on the first inventor or company to file an application, rather than the current first-to-invent system