After nearly a year and a half, the switch to a first-to-file patent application system is almost here and lawyers’ opinions on the impact it will have on filing activity are divided along industry lines.

The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, which was signed into law in September 2011, provided that the U.S. abandon its first-to-invent system for determining who is awarded a patent on a particular discovery or invention to a first-to-file system.