US Senate passes bill to overhaul patent system

Chronicle of Higher Education : In a move with implications for inventors and industrialists, the US Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill on Tuesday to reform the US patent system. If enacted, the bill would replace the current “first to invent” criterion for awarding patents with a “first inventor to file” criterion. The new criterion could affect how academics publish potentially patentable research. That’s because the first person to invent a new device could lose out on a patent if the second person to invent a similar device published his or her work first.