The Senate Judiciary Committee, under the auspices of Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT), has been working on patent reform legislation for about a year now and, earlier this month, Chairman Leahy announced that a compromise had been reached with Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-AL). You might expect that to be big news for microbusinesses, nonemployer businesses and/or individual inventors, all of which are regularly either swindled or outspent out of their intellectual property rights. But the very provisions that lawmakers inserted in order to make it easier for the little guys to challenge patents filed by the big boys are being decried by small business advocates as bad policy because they make it easier for the big boys to harass the little guys. Top on the list is the push to move the U.S. patent system from a first-to-invent to a first-to-file system.

Smaller inventors often shop their inventions in search of financing or attempt to test the market before they invest in costly patent filings, according to microbusiness advocates, and the new system would place them at a disadvantage. There is language in the reformed reform bill that mandates patent filing fees be reduced by 50% for small entities and by 75% for micro-entities but that does not seem to have made the advocates feel any better about the first-to-file provisions. In response to all this uncertainty, last week Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Chairwoman Mary Landrieu (D-LA) introduced the Small Business Patent Data Collection Act (S. 3089), which directs the SBA Office of Advocacy to conduct an impact study on how small businesses fare under the new system. The bill has been referred to Landrieu’s committee; it currently has no co-sponsors.