> in my view it seems quite fair that simply thinking up an idea and doing nothing with it doesn’t grant an individual unending rights to it. Surely coming fro

> in my view it seems quite fair that simply thinking up an idea and doing nothing with it doesn’t grant an individual unending rights to it. Surely coming from someone who never devoted any time whatsoever to solving a difficult problem. Not defending the US patent system. It's still a mess. This first to file rule will have one important effect: People and companies will not most-definitely patent ideas. Yeah, I know, ideas are not patentable. If you spent any time reading through patents (me, probably several hundred) you know with absolute certainty that a huge percentage of granted patents are ideas that never saw reduction to practice. The new setup means that I better file as soon as I think I have all to moving parts figured out because if I wait another year for the normal course of R&D some guy might beat me to it. So, I'll go ahead and file to get a patent on my idea. And I'll do so as soon as humanly possible. Reduction to practice? Prototypes? No time. File! File! File! Not sure this makes things better.