First to File system to face Judicial scrutinty

An American Inventor, Mark Stadnyk and his company Madsatd Engineering Inc is now challenging the Constitutional validity of USA's new patent regime under the America Invents Act of 2011 which replaced the "First to invent" with  "First to file".

Mark Stadnyk has sued the USPTO,its director, David Kappos  and the United States of America before the United States District  Court for the Middle District Florida Tampa Division.

Contentions raised by the Plaintiff

• Mark stadnyk claims that the First inventor to file system is a " smoke screen", in the sense that in reality patents would be granted only to the person who have filed the application early regardless of whether the applicant is the first inventor of the system
• The "First - to- file " system violates the intellectual property clause of US constitution as this would allow patents only to  the "winners of race", ignoring the actual inventors of genuine discoveries. Further he points out that First- to - File system was rejected in the early years of US IP regime especially by Thomas Jefferson, one of the members of original patent board in some early cases.
•  "First- to - File " system would discourage innovation as  individual inventors, start ups, small business and research organizations lack the resources to compete with the big corporations in the race to file applications with PTO. 
• He calls the Act per se discriminatory against small inventors, universities and independent research institutes which is basically the backbone of every nation's innovation.
• AIA and the First- to- File system would only increase the back log of cases within the USPTO and would increase the duration of entire process.
• Further he points out that since AIA is concerned with the First- To - File system the inventors and entrepreneurs are now forced to invest a large amount for protection of computer data to prevent others from having access to R&D of their company. He claim that Madstad Engineering Inc, itself have invested $3,500,00 for additional computer security measures.

Mark Stadnyk claims that AIA has thus caused irreparable harm to plaintiff's business, property and constitutional rights and hence ask the court to restrain USPTO and US Government from using AIA's provisions against him.

It would be interesting to look into the proceedings of the case and how the Federal Court is going to determine the constitutional validity of the new  "First- To - File" system.

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