The Senate voted 89-9 to pass a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. patent system today and sent it out to President Obama for his signature. This would be the most significant revision we’ve seen to the aging patent system in over 60 years. The main goal is to streamline the patent process and give the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office the money and manpower they need to get things done in a timely manner. Currently, it takes an average of 3 years to get a patent approved and the UPTO has a backlog of 1.2 million pending patents.

Obama had this to say,

“Today you passed reform that will speed up the outdated patent process, so that entrepreneurs can turn a new idea into a new business as quickly as possible. That’s the kind of action we need.”

The added manpower will translate into more and better trained examiners who will in turn, better judge what patents are getting passed in the first place. This will help avoid the long and costly legal battles we’ve been so much of as of late by preventing companies (like Apple) who use broad and vague patents to sue everyone. Much of the time we have one company suing another over patents they never invented in the first place. More man power = more scrutiny. Big corporations like IBM, Apple, Google, among others are all on board and fully endorse the bill.