Senate Nears Final Vote on Patents

I'm sorry, the notion that this somehow levels the playing field is completely wrong. It's very difficult for a layperson to file a patent properly, in the proper legalese and keep track of all the necessary actions. This bill definitely opens up patents to large corporations and patent holding companies that can essentially throw teams of lawyers at particular fields.

After spending 5 years and more money than I'd like to admit on our patent that has still yet to be awarded I can tell you from personal experience that every response is cryptic, and the necessary follow-up actions are extensive and intensive. Furthermore, if they're not written in the proper legalese you have even less of a chance.

This is yet another boon to large corporations and their lawyers. Now that companies such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft don't have to worry about prior-art we'll see innovation slow to a crawl, and startups will have even less of a chance of disrupting the status quo as a lawsuit won't be too far behind. I can see it now, We demand you shutdown as you're infringing on the patent we were recently awarded, it won't matter that you were already operating. They can simply pay extra fees, get a faster approval and you're gone. This is supposed to be progress and improvement? Only to the lobbyists and their employers.

Does the Senate seriously think THIS is the sort of reform we need in the patent system? Are they that out of touch?

The article itself isn't much better, it barely touches on the real problems in patent law.

What would it take to DDOS the patent office?

Wait, what?

Who is suggesting that prior art wouldn't/shouldn't matter?

"First to file" patents would still be invalidated by any published (or publicly available) prior art. It just means that you couldn't invalidate by demonstrating that you were privately working on the same idea.