The America Invents Act (AIA) is patent reform legislation that has been enacted in a series of steps. The most significant change resulting from the AIA occurred on March 16, when the U.S. patent system converted from a "first to invent" system into a "first to file" system. The transition from first-to-invent to a first-to-file system means that both the laws that govern the first-to-invent system (or pre-AIA rules) and the laws that govern the first-to-file system (or post-AIA rules) will exist simultaneously for more than 20 years, and which set of rules governs the prosecution of a patent application depends on the application’s filing date.
The rules take different approaches to true inventorship. For those applications filed pre-AIA, the first-to-invent rules rely on the date of conception of the invention when making a determination as to which inventor prevails as the first to invent. The pre-AIA patent laws allow for interference proceedings proceedings to determine who was the first inventor to conceive of an invention in situations where two patent applications pending at the same time each describe the same invention. For those applications filed post-AIA, the first-to-file rules focus on whether the first person to file a patent application is actually a true inventor. The post-AIA rules allow for derivative proceedings proceedings to determine that the first person to file did not derive the invention from another and claim it as his or her own.
