As noted in an earlier post, the unitary patent and unified patent court in Europe was a hot topic of conversation at the IP Summit in Brussels recently. However, the unitary patent package was not the only major law change discussed and on 7 December 2012 I attended an informative session on “Filing Scenarios Before and After March 16, 2013” in relation to the America Invents Act (AIA).

This session was chaired by Eric Raciti from Finnegan with Malcolm T Meeks (Infineon Technologies AG) and Prof. Herb Munsterman (IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law) on the panel. The session focused on changes to the scope of prior art under AIA and also covered changes to the US grace period and new post-grant procedures that will be available to challenge granted US patents.

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