U.S. Patent Chief to Step Down Early Next Year

David Kappos, Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, will leave that office at the end of January, a spokesperson confirmed to Mashable.

Kappos has been the USPTO director for more than three years, overseeing a period of massive overhaul and streamlining. His most well-remembered legacy is likely to be his work on the America Invents Act, which will switch the United States patent system from “first to invent” to “first to file” in March of next year. Translation: patents will be awarded to the first person to file them, not the first person to put the idea to practice.

Some observers applaud the switch as an overdue update to the country’s patent system, as the United States was one of the only holdouts on First-to-Invent. However, critics — particularly those in the software business — complain that the switch is fueling patent trolling and stifling innovation. First to File, its detractors argue, allows large and wealthy companies to file patents and sit on them, chasing away any entrepreneur with a similar idea by threatening to sue.

A successor to Kappos has not yet been named.

The unexpected news of Kappos’ departure comes less than a week after he urged critics of the America Invents Act and First to File to give the bill “a chance to work.”

“Give it a rest already … give it a chance to even get started,” said Kappos of the First to File system’s critics at an address given to the Center for American Progress last Tuesday. “Innovation continues at an absolutely breakneck pace. In a system like ours in which innovation is happening faster than people can keep up, it cannot be said that the patent system is broken.”

Kappos added in that speech that the AIA gives patent officers new tools to reject software submissions unworthy of legal protection.

Image courtesy of Flickr, US Mission Geneva

Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/11/26/kappos-stepping-down/

U.S. Patent Chief to Step Down Early Next Year

patents, U.S., US & World