Patent Reform Act to aid nanotechnology?

Today’s San Jose Mercury News — the newspaper of Silicon Valley — features a guest editorial by Wirt Cook, IBM vice president and senior state executive, on the proposed Patent Reform Act, titled “Patent Reform Act best way to protect, foster innovation”:

Berman’s bill will enable private-citizen-experts to help patent examiners research the novelty of proposed patents so that they can make a more informed decision. The bill will also create a framework for individual inventors or businesses to dispute the validity of a patent without the expense and time of a courtroom litigation.

I’m no patent expert, but this does sound good. The real experts — Ted Sabety, Mark Lemley, and more recently Larry Lessig — have been raising patent issues as problematic for nanotechnology. —Christine