The Comprehensive Guide to Patent Reform: The Critical Industry Forum on The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act

Partner Harold Wegner spoke at the American Conference Institute’s event, The Comprehensive Guide to Patent Reform: The critical industry forum on The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. His presentation was titled “Preparing Your Company for the Looming Implementation of the First-to-File Regime and Preparing Strategies to Exploit the Coming Changes for Maximum Benefit.”

American Conference Institute’s 2nd Comprehensive Guide to Patent Reform once again unites experienced in-house counsel from top innovators, private practice experts, and senior officials from the USPTO to answer patent professionals’ most pressing questions, including:

• What does “first to file” actually mean under the AIA requirements? Which system can you or should you file under – the current first to invent or the new first to file (or both)? And how do you avoid first-to-file bubble filings before 3/15/2013?


• When can on-sale and public use activity be considered prior art? Has secret §102(f) prior art been eliminated?


• Do you need to include best mode in the application or not and what happens if you don’t? Is best mode completely toothless now? How will examiners be able to address the best mode issue?


• What will be required in the PGR process? What type of discovery? Expert witnesses? How do the estoppel provisions alter your analysis of whether to engage in the PGR system?


• What estoppel provisions are associated with IPRs and how are these different from the inter partes reexamination provisions? When do you file a 3rd party parallel IPR?

For more information, please visit the American Conference Institute’s Web site.