Patent System Overhaul: Bill Reverts to 'First-to-Invent,' Abolishes PTAB, and Boosts Software Patents

This legislation, the Restoring America’s Leadership in Innovation Act of 2025, is a massive rewind and reboot of the U.S. patent system. It aims to tear down many of the changes put in place by the 2011 America Invents Act (AIA) and several Supreme Court decisions, fundamentally shifting power back toward patent owners and away from administrative review. The core action is a complete structural overhaul: ditching the current “first-to-file” system and returning to the older, more complex “first-to-invent” standard, while simultaneously scrapping the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and its popular administrative review processes.

Back to the Future: The First-to-Invent System

The biggest change under Section 3 is the return to “first-to-invent.” Since 2013, the U.S. has used “first-to-file,” meaning the first person to submit the paperwork gets the patent, regardless of who invented it first. This bill reverses that, meaning you must now prove you were the first to conceive the idea and diligently work to reduce it to practice. For busy entrepreneurs and small inventors, this is a mixed bag. On one hand, if you invent something but need time to find funding or refine it, you’re protected from a competitor filing first. On the other hand, proving you were truly “first” can turn patent disputes into incredibly messy, expensive legal battles requiring detailed, dated evidence—a huge headache compared to simply tracking a filing date. This section also restores a critical one-year grace period, letting inventors publicly test or discuss their work before the clock starts ticking on their filing deadline—a huge win for academic researchers and early-stage startups.

The Administrative Review Graveyard

For those who follow patent disputes, Sections 4 and 5 are the earthquake. The bill abolishes the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and eliminates the inter partes review (IPR) and post-grant review processes it ran. These administrative reviews were created to offer a faster, cheaper way to challenge weak patents without going to federal court. By removing them, the bill forces all patent challenges back into the federal court system. This is great for patent owners who hated the PTAB (often called a “patent death squad” by critics), but it’s a major setback for companies—especially tech and manufacturing firms—who rely on IPR to efficiently invalidate low-quality patents that are being used to sue them. Expect the cost and time required to fight a patent lawsuit to jump significantly, impacting anyone who might be accused of infringement.

Making Software and Science Patentable Again

Section 7 directly addresses years of confusion over what exactly is eligible for a patent, especially in the software and life sciences fields. The bill explicitly overrides several key Supreme Court decisions (like Alice Corp. and Myriad Genetics) that made it difficult to patent things considered “abstract ideas” or “natural phenomena.” The intent here is clear: Congress wants to make sure that software innovations, medical diagnostics, and other discoveries are definitively eligible for patent protection. If you’re a software developer or biotech researcher, this means your work is much more likely to be patentable, offering stronger incentives for innovation in these areas. However, this also opens the door to potentially broader, more abstract patents, which could lead to more litigation down the line.

Stronger Property Rights, Secret Applications

This bill treats a patent like private property, similar to real estate, not just a government-granted privilege (Section 9). This strengthening is paired with powerful enforcement tools. If a court finds someone copied a patent, Section 12 creates a presumption that the patent owner is suffering irreparable harm, making it much easier for them to get an injunction—a court order stopping the copying immediately. Under previous Supreme Court precedent, getting an injunction was much harder. Now, the burden of proof shifts heavily to the infringer to show why they should be allowed to continue copying.

Crucially, Section 10 ends the current practice of automatically publishing patent applications 18 months after filing. Now, your invention stays secret until the patent is actually granted. For inventors, this is a huge win, protecting their trade secrets from foreign competitors or rivals before the patent is actually issued. However, for the public and researchers, this means less technical information is available sooner, slowing down the diffusion of knowledge that often spurs further innovation.

Finally, Section 6 ensures the USPTO gets full, non-lapsing access to all the fees it collects, moving the funds into a new “Innovation Promotion Fund.” This means the agency should be better funded and protected from budget cuts, which should ideally lead to faster, higher-quality patent examination services.