AIA Patents

The first-to-invent rules of the America Invents Act came into force on March 16, 2013. Patents with an effective-filing-date of March 16 or later are judged under the new rules of prior art and priority found in 35 U.S.C. § 102. Because the patent-prosecution process is slow, it appears that only two such utility patents have issued thus far: U.S. Patent Nos. 8,557,916 and 8,534,240. Both patents through an accelerated examination program and both issued without substantive rejection from the patent examiners. We expect to see only a trickle of these cases coming through over the next year with a larger bolus following.