The Impact of Patent Reform on Independent Inventors and Start-up Companies

Brief:

Patent reform was signed into law September 16, 2011. This law, called the “America Invents Act”, will make sweeping changes to how patents are obtained, validated and enforced. Three of these changes are particularly important to independent inventors and start-up companies. The changes are: determining patent validity based on “first to file” versus “first to invent”; lower “micro entity” fees for independent inventors; and post-grant review for challenging the validity of recently issued patents.

Mark Nowotarski, registered US patent agent, will present the basics of these changes, explain how they are likely to impact independent inventors and start-up companies, and discuss strategies for how to best take advantage of the opportunities these changes create. There will also be a question and answer period.

About the speaker:

Mark Nowotarski is the President of Markets, Patents & Alliances L.L.C. and is a registered U.S. patent agent. He has served clients in the medical devices, personal safety, consumer products, homeland security, and financial services industries.

Mark is a former Associate Director of R&D for Praxair. There he was responsible for the development and successful worldwide introduction of new products into the environmental, electronics, metals and food industries. His initiatives generated over $300 million in sales.

Mark is an inventor on 17 US patents. He was appointed Corporate Research Fellow for the commercial impact of his inventions.

Mark has a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford and a Bachelor's degree with honors in Aerospace, Mechanical Sciences and Engineering Physics from Princeton. His academic awards include the Sigma Xi award for most outstanding Mechanical Engineering research at Princeton and the Union Carbide Award for Academic Excellence and Leadership in Mechanical Engineering, also at Princeton.

Mark has been quoted as a patent expert in The New York Times, Stamford Advocate, and Bloomberg Wealth Manager. He was also recently interviewed on NEWS 12 regarding the dramatic growth of patents in social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

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