wafer fab industry backs patent reform effort
06/01/1997
Wafer fab industry backs patent reform effort
An amended version of a patent reform bill supported by SEMI and much of the semiconductor industry has passed in Congress, but the bill`s proponents say there`s still more work to be done to protect companies.
The Coble bill, or H.R. 400, sponsored by Rep. Howard Coble, CA, proposed several changes to the US patent system, including protecting applicants` patent terms from delays outside their control, making the Patent and Trademark Office an independent government agency, and requiring the publication of all applications at 18 months with provisional royalty rights.
In April, members of the House passed the bill, but under a proposal offered by Rep. Marcy Kaptur, OH, they amended it to give small businesses and independent inventors exemptions from the 18-month publication requirement, except in cases where the applicant has or plans to have a patent pending in a foreign country. The bill has yet to be voted on the Senate floor. Jennifer Connell, manager of public policy for SEMI, said work must be done to re-instate some of the protections offered in the original version of H.R. 400.
"We think it was a major victory to have H.R. 400 pass. We would have preferred to see it pass without the Kaptur amendment," said Connell, SEMI`s liaison to the 21st Century Patent Coalition, a group of companies and associations pushing for patent reform. Coalition members include the Semiconductor Industry Association and such companies as Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, National Semiconductor, IBM, Intel, and Texas Instruments.
Connell, along with the bill`s cosponsor Rep. Zoe Lofgren, CA, said the amendment opens the system up to what they call "submarine patents," where a patent applicant intentionally delays the application for decades while co-opting others` work and amending it into their patent application. A patent reform law passed in 1995 began to alleviate the problem by mandating that patent terms begin at the time of application, rather than the date of patent granting, and expire after 20 years. Under the old patent system, terms were measured 17 years from the date of patent granting; the time period between the application date and granting date could vary from just under two years to several decades.
This latest reform is said to take the 1995 reform one step further, and require publication of patents 18 months after application, as is done in most other major industrial countries.
Lofgren, whose district includes much of Silicon Valley, called the Kaptur amendment a "licensing of submarine patents." While the amended bill does require about 75% of all applicants (large businesses and many universities) to publish patent applications, small businesses and independent inventors are given exemptions.
Addressing a problem raised by the 1995 reform - the possibility of shortened patent terms in cases where delays held up approval of a patent for several years - H.R. 400 allows up to 10 years for patent term extensions to accommodate delays outside the applicant`s control. Under Kaptur`s amended version, the bill additionally calls for the publication of patent applications from otherwise exempted applicants, i.e. an independent inventor, if an application has been pending for more than five years.
In those cases, however, as Connell points out, the applicant can petition the patent office to prevent publication and such review is likely to prolong the time period without publication. - Christine Lunday, WaferNews