The passage of a patent-reform bill by the US Senate on 8 September was a rare win for President Barack Obama, who on the same day gave a high-profile speech on job creation and argued that patent reform was part of the solution. The America Invents Act, as it is called, is also good news for researchers and their institutions.

The link to jobs is speculative, but the bill is likely to simplify life for inventors. Most significantly, it moves the United States to a first-to-file system, in which patents are granted to those who get their applications to the patent office first. That should eliminate the lengthy administrative procedures that are often required to determine who has the true priority on inventions under the current first-to-invent system. Any scientist who has ever been caught up in a patent wrangle — such as the competition between Bell Laboratories and IBM for the US patent on the high-temperature superconductor yttrium barium copper oxide, which famously took 13 years to be settled in favour of Bell Labs — will see the advantages of that.

Gene patents stifle research and restrict patients' access to second opinions.

The bill is also expected to reduce costly patent litigation by ensuring, through a review procedure after the patent is granted, that all patents describe working inventions. 'Patent trolls' — individuals and companies who attempt to make money by filing broad patents, then suing those who use similar technologies — will not welcome the move, but legitimate inventors will. A third important change is a presumption that the US Patent and Trademark Office will, at Congress's discretion, be able to keep the filing fees that it raises each year, rather than see them diverted to other parts of the government. That will leave the office with extra resources to clear its backlog of patent applications.

An earlier version of the bill would have prevented Congress from diverting the funds at will, but that provision was watered down by politicians keen to retain congressional control of the budget. The bill also misses an opportunity to loosen constraints placed on research and medicine by gene patents. Researchers or companies who independently develop diagnostic tests based on genes that have already been patented risk being sued for patent infringement. In July, a New York appeals court underscored that risk when it upheld the rights of Myriad Genetics, a genetic-testing company in Salt Lake City, Utah, to enforce its patents on genes implicated in breast and ovarian cancer.

As early as 2006, a National Academy of Sciences panel recommended that Congress consider an exception to the enforceability of patents on genes used for diagnostic tests, to allow independent confirmation of the results. And the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health, and Society — a panel convened by the Department of Health and Human Services — found in 2010 that gene patents were stifling research and restricting patients' access to second opinions. The committee strongly recommended exemptions for anyone conducting independent tests or basic research. An amendment to the America Invents Act could have implemented such exemptions, but now the bill merely calls for yet another study of the issue.

Still, the bill's passage with bipartisan support is a precious exception to the polarization that has characterized US political debates as campaigns for the 2012 presidential election get under way. Given that attempts to update the US patent system have failed repeatedly in recent years, researchers should be happy to see reform implemented at last.