Welcome to the third installment of the ongoing debate with US patent legislation. An analogous version of the proposed Patent Reform Act of 2007 has already been approved in the House and will be on the agenda for a vote in the Senate within a few months. This particular debate is basically between two opposing parties with individual interests at heart. According to the large companies this bill will clearly demarcate between willful contravention and cases in which infringement is not premeditated. It will further stipulate suitable action for each and every case. On the other side the technology licensing companies and the independent inventors believe that the act will bound patent holder’s privileges and suppress innovation.

The proposed bill will also be an enormous giveaway of American technical knowledge and expertise. The reformed patent act will make it obligatory for the U.S. patent office to make online the particulars of all inventions after 18 months of the date of application. As we all are well aware of the fact that it takes quite a long time for a patent to be granted. Therefore the actual winner of this provision will be the infringers, who can easily steal the inventions over the internet.

Apart from encouraging infringement the US Patent Reform Act of 2007 will also make it economical for infringers to file patented inventions by edging damages to the patent’s specific input over the particular part of the innovation that has been stolen. This will result in lower damages awards while increasing the litigation costs. In most cases damages are the only mean of remedy accessible to a small inventor. With this provision the reformed patent act will diminish the significance of patent property rights. It will even demoralize the ability of small companies and independent inventors to repulse large infringers.

Once the bill is approved it will further make it trouble-free for patent infringers to nullify a patent anytime even after it is issued. Hence the reformed patent act makes the inventor’s intellectual property rights vulnerable and trims down their ability to fetch venture capital. Thereby this particular bill is a big threat on the legitimate property rights of independent inventors and small firms.