Senate OKs revamp of U.S. patent system

WASHINGTON - The Senate on Thursday passed an overhaul of the U.S. patent system that President Obama has called crucial to his administration's effort to boost job growth.

In an 89-9 vote, it cleared a bill passed by the House in June that would fundamentally alter the way patents are reviewed and mark the biggest change to U.S. patent law since at least 1952. The measure, called the America Invents Act, now heads to the White House for Obama's signature.

The legislation would let the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office set its own fees and exercise greater control over its budget, providing the agency with more funding to address a backlog of nearly 700,000 applications awaiting first review.

Reducing the time it takes to give inventions legal protection will speed new products to the market and spur economic growth, according to the bill's supporters.

"This bill is important for our economy," Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D., Vt.), who sponsored the measure, said before the vote. "It's important for job creation. It's a product of bipartisan and bicameral collaboration."

The legislation, which culminates more than six years of negotiations and lobbying, covers every step of the patent process, setting new procedures to review issued patents while curtailing some litigation.

It has the support of large companies including Microsoft Corp., International Business Machines Corp., and a group that represents Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly & Co., 3M Co., and General Electric Co.

The changes "will ensure that innovators in our troubled economy can benefit from a predictable and rational patent system, with new tools to eliminate patents that should not have issued and to speed the processing of patents that should be issued," Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft's deputy general counsel for intellectual property and licensing, said in a blog posting this week.

The funding provision, which also would let the agency increase fees paid by inventors and patent owners, is the cornerstone of the bill. Since 1990, the agency says, more than $800 million in fees have been diverted by lawmakers to non-patent purposes.

The Obama administration says the money is needed to hire more examiners and improve agency computer systems to cut the current 34-month wait for patent approval.