POST 18: Patent Application Filings Increasing

It seems that the amount of patent filings is growing at a rapid pace. 

http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2013/03/pre-aia-filing-numbers.html
What is the cause of such an increase of patent filings? It is partly due to a March 15th deadline of way a patent could be filed. New rules, set in place March 16th, have made it harder to gain patents. 


"In January and February 2013, filing averaged about 7,100 non-provisional applications per week. In the three weeks before the change-over, the filing increased substantially. In all, about one-month worth of extra applications were filed during those three weeks (about 33,000 non-provisional applications). As the chart shows, applicants also ramped-up filing of provisional applications"

Is this a good idea? Should patents be harder to file or easier? Will this new law help lessen the amount of legal battles over patents? Will the law instead make these legal battles even bigger?

It's hard to say now. However, it is clear that those who were able to file their patent prior to the march 15ht deadline have an advantage over those who don't. The value of a patent therefore went up, meaning that the stake are higher than ever in the outcomes of these patent wars. It will however, create less of these battles despite the stakes being higher. By making patents harder to file, the holder will have to be even more specific.