The three-hour session included John Love, deputy commissioner for patent examination policy at the USPTO, law professors Adam Jaffe and F Scott Kieffe and Judge Pauline Newman of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Several private practitioners also spoke on topics such as how to draft patent applications to support broad claims, obviousness rejections post- KSR v Teleflex and patentable subject matter in light of the potential outcome of In re Bilski .

All of the speakers agreed that "stability" and "certainty" are crucial to a strong patent system, since investors and patentees need to be confident they will see some return.

Many of the panellists also agreed that the US patent system has strayed away from these imperatives in recent years as a result of developments in case law.

John Salazar of Middleton Reutlinger, who outlined strategies for responding to obviousness rejections post- KSR , cited one statistic that found the USPTO Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) now affirms 70% of obviousness rejections. " KSR has made our life much more difficult," said Salazar.

Love of the USPTO identified so-called patent quality as a "hot topic" and welcomed ideas for objective ways of determining what comprises a quality patent (look in the November issue of Managing IP , available online next month, for a feature by Marian Underweiser of IBM addressing this issue). "We need an objective metric," said Love.

He also said that the economic crisis has not affected patent filings and that "we expect growth to continue". But continued growth of filings means that the Office's backlog of over 800,000 applications also will continue to increase.

To that end, Love reviewed several initiatives aimed at increasing efficiency and quality, including accelerated examinations , the first action interview pilot programme , the peer reviewed prior art pilot programme , work sharing initiatives such as the patent prosecution highway (PPH) and the tri-way pilot.

USPTO director Jon Dudas and commissioner of patents John Doll are also working on other projects, to create one common classification

Law professors Adam Jaffe of Brandeis University and F Scott Kieffe of Washington University engaged in a sometimes heated debate over whether proposed changes to the patent system will help or harm innovation.

"The enemy of investment is uncertainty," said Jaffe, who advocated the implementation of a post-grant review process in the US. He said that relying on lawyers and the USPTO to produce the proper validity determination on a patent is not sufficient. "You need to create incentives for all of the people out there to bring the information to the PTO," he said. "An open system is the best way to resolve that conflict."

Kieffe said that a patent should be a "beacon" and an "incentive for parties to strike deals". He said that the recent changes to patent law "have only increased uncertainty" and that backing up patents with fairly serious sanctions is necessary to provide the proper incentive for investment.

Judge Pauline Newman delivered her "views from the bench" on the issues discussed and said that she was "struck" to hear from the panellists that stability is still such an overarching concern.

Newman recapped the evolution of the Federal Circuit and reminded the audience that most of the cases heard by the Court today would not have been litigated at all prior to its creation.

"There's much more rhetoric than objectivity in a good deal of what's going on," said Newman.

Newman wrapped up by urging attendees to proactively address the issues tackled during the session. "I hope you will think about appropriate ways these issues can be resolved," she said. "There's so much at stake. The future is in your hands."