A longtime Senate Judiciary Committee counsel will be joining the Patent and Trademark Office, a year after he played a key role in the sweeping changes to the patent system spurred by the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act.
Joe Matal is leaving as committee counsel for retiring Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and going to the office that has been implementing the changes since the bill was enacted in September, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) announced during a committee hearing last week.
Matal wrote the legislative history of the act that is posted on the PTO website, a heavily footnoted, 79-page description of the efforts to reform the patent system. The law adopted the first-to-file system of determining a patent's priority date and made many other important changes to the patent code. It was the first comprehensive patent bill to be enacted since the Patent Act of 1952, he wrote.
"He was extremely helpful in bipartisan work in patent reform legislation that we enacted last year," Leahy said at the committee hearing. "In fact, he was there for the signing ceremony. I wish him the best in his new position."
Matal has been the counsel to the committee since 2002, except for when he worked for Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) during 2009 and 2010, when Sessions was ranking member of the committee. He could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
The PTO media affairs office did not immediately return a phone call Tuesday asking about Matal's new position, including his title at the agency.
The first commenter’s frustration is a good example of the legitimate concerns many individual inventors and academics have about the AIA. Mr. Matal’s decision to leave his position as Senate Judiciary Committee Counsel for the PTO will only to lead to further criticism. While this bill is the biggest change to patent law in six decades, there is likely to be a dual system involving both the old and new rules for patent applications until AIA becomes the norm in March 2013.
Posted by: Klein Trial Lawyers | August 24, 2012 at 10:20 AM
"he played a key role in the sweeping changes to the patent system..."
What he did was help legalize theft.
Just because they call it "reform" doesn't mean it is.
"patent reform"...America Invents Act, vers 2.0, 3.0...
“This is not a patent reform bill” Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) complained, despite other democrats praising the overhaul. “This is a big corporation patent giveaway that tramples on the right of small inventors.”
Senator Cantwell is right. Just because they call it “reform” doesn’t mean it is. The paid puppets of banks, huge multinationals, and China are at it again trying to brain wash and bankrupt America.
They should have called these bills the America STOPS Inventing Act or ASIA, because that’s where they’re sending all our jobs.
The patent bill (vers 2, 3, etc) is nothing less than another monumental federal giveaway for banks, huge multinationals, and China and an off shoring job killing nightmare for America. Even the leading patent expert in China has stated the bill will help them steal our inventions. Congress passed it and Obama signed it. Who are they working for??
Patent reform is a fraud on America. Congress and Obama are both to blame. This bill will not do what they claim it will. What it will do is help large multinational corporations maintain their monopolies by robbing and destroying their small entity and startup competitors (so it will do exactly what the large multinationals paid for) and with them the jobs they would have created. The bill will make it harder and more expensive for small firms to get and enforce their patents. Without patents we cant get funded. In this way large firms are able to play king of the hill and keep their small competitors from reaching the top as they have. Yet small entities create the lion's share of new jobs. According to recent studies by the Kauffman Foundation and economists at the U.S. Census Bureau, “startups aren’t everything when it comes to job growth. They’re the only thing.” This bill is a wholesale destroyer of US jobs. Those wishing to help fight this bill should contact us as below.
Small entities and inventors have been given far too little voice on this bill when one considers that they rely far more heavily on the patent system than do large firms who can control their markets by their size alone. The smaller the firm, the more they rely on patents -especially startups and individual inventors. Congress and Obama tinkering with patent law while gagging inventors is like a surgeon operating before examining the patient.
Those wishing to help fight big business giveaways and set America on a course for sustainable prosperity, not large corporation lobbied poverty, should contact us as below and join the fight as we are building a network of inventors and other stakeholders to lobby Congress to restore property rights for all patent owners -large and small.
Please see http://truereform.piausa.org/default.html for a different/opposing view on patent reform.
http://docs.piausa.org/
Posted by: staff | August 08, 2012 at 10:38 AM