The America Invents Act, Its Unique First-to-File System and Its Transfer of Power from Juries to the United States Patent and Trademark Office

The signing of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) by President Obama on 16 September 2011 is a landmark event in the history of American patent law. It has already been the subject of numerous articles on the web and in the law reviews as well as in the popular press. I have no intention here of going into all the details of the AIA, I just want to leave the reader with a sense for its eventual impact on American patent law. All the details are to be found in its 37 sections whose titles give the reader a good sense of the scope of the AIA. In one sense Section 1 says it all