On the recordMarch 3, 2011
I am hoping that my colleagues will vote against the Feinstein amendment and support the authors of the legislation. I noted yesterday that every version of the patent bill from 2005 forward has included the primary, centerpiece reform of the bill, which is the so-called first-to-file system. It may seem strange, but it has not been the case before this bill that you have a patent's priority from when you file it; that is to say, the first person to file on the patent is the one who has the patent; that the patent dates to the day it is filed. That is what we do in law and virtually every other situation I can imagine. Instead, what has been the law is called the first-to-invent system. One of the reasons the whole patent reform movement began 5 or 6 years ago was that this system is very costly and difficult to administer because it relies on a lot of legal discovery and legal process to resolve questions or disputes between who actually conceived of the idea first and then did they apply the necessary diligence to get it patented. As a result, every other industrialized country uses the first-to-file system.
