The America Invents Act (AIA) ushered in a new era for patent law and procedure at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Among the changes that took effect were the much-debated shift away from the first-to-invent standard and to a first-to-file standard that is far more consistent with the rest of the world, although not identical. Philosophically, the shift to a first-to-file system represents a major shift, but in truth, the U.S. had a de facto first-to-file system already. It had been years since a small entity (i.e., a company with 500 or fewer employees) had been able to prevail by demonstrating that they invented before another party filed a patent application. For the most part, much of the focus on first-to-file has done nothing more than divert attention from the most significant change from the patent owners perspective…. There is little doubt that the largest change ushered in by the AIA was the creation of administrative patent trials, namely Inter…
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