Patent lawyers say inventors need to get ready for sweeping changes coming to U.S. patent law, including one change that will award patents not to the first person to invent something, but to the first to file a patent application on the invention.
Ballard Spahr attorneys Mary An Merchant and J. Gibson Lanier told a gathering of scientists and technology transfer administrators that the Obama administration's recent overhaul of the patent system turns on its head the decades-old system in which the first inventor is given preference.
“If someone else files an application first, you lose,” Merchant said.