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Poisoning The Next Apple? The America Invents Act And Individual Inventors, David S. Abrams, R. Polk Wagner
Poisoning The Next Apple? The America Invents Act And Individual Inventors, David S. Abrams, R. Polk Wagner
All Faculty Scholarship
The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, the most significant patent law reform effort in two generations, has a dark side: It seems likely to decrease the patenting behavior of small inventors, a category which occupies special significance in American innovation history. In this paper we empirically predict the effects of the major change in the law: a shift in the patent priority rules from the United States’ traditional “first-to-invent” system to the predominant “first-to-file” system. While there has been some theoretical work on this topic, we use the Canadian experience with a similar change as a natural experiment to shed …