TAMPA (CN) - An inventor claims in court that the America Invents Act of 2011 violates inventors' rights, by replacing the "first to invent" patent system with a deficient "first to file" rule.
Mark Stadnyk and his company MadStad Engineering sued the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, its director, David Kappos, and the United States of America, in Federal Court.
Stadnyk says the America Invents Act (AIA), which took effect last year, is "special interest legislation" that favors big corporations at the expense of small businesses and individual inventors.
Under the new law, Stadnyk says, the first one to file a patent application gets exclusive rights to an invention, even if the applicant is not the original inventor.
"The AIA, signed into law by the president on Sept. 16, 2011, is a radical change that threatens the U.S. economy and American jobs," the complaint states. "It discards the 'first-to-invent' patent system crafted by the Constitution's founders - a system that led the world in science, technology, and industry for more than two centuries - and substitutes a failed 'first-to-file' system.
"Traditionally, the U.S. patent system has awarded patents to the first person to invent a new discovery. The AIA changes this long-settled approach. Although the AIA is labeled as a 'first-inventor-to-file' system, that label is a smokescreen. Under the AIA, the patent will be awarded to the person who is first to file a patent application, regardless of whether the applicant was the actual first inventor of the technology in question. In fact, the AIA removes from the 'conditions of patentability' of Section 102 of the Patent Act (and thereby from the conditions of patent validity) the requirement that the named inventor actually invented the claimed subject matter." (Parentheses in complaint).
Stadnyk claims the first-to-file system violates the Intellectual Property Clause of the Constitution, which states that patents can be awarded only to original inventors.
The complaint states: "The Intellectual Property Clause prohibits Congress from vesting patents in anyone but actual 'inventors' of genuine 'discoveries.' Congress is not authorized to award patents to the winners of the race to file at the PTO [Patent and Trademark Office].
"The new 'first-to-file' approach will discourage innovation. Countries using a first-to-file approach have experienced a relative decrease in the number of inventions. One reason is that individual inventors, start-ups, small businesses, and research organizations simply lack the resources to compete with big corporations in the race to file patent applications with the PTO. They will be unable to afford the expense of the multiple applications that are necessary to protect inventions, update a pending patent, and attract new sponsors and researchers.
"The AIA is special-interest legislation, pure and simple. It favors large corporations and multinationals, while discriminating against the small inventors - individuals, start-ups, universities, and independent research institutes - that have always formed the backbone of U.S. innovation. If the Act had been law in the twentieth century, the Wright brothers would have been denied a patent for the airplane, and the founders of Hewlett-Packard would have been denied a patent for the variable frequency oscillator. Not surprisingly, the AIA was passed over the vehement objections of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and patent law experts.