On Sept. 16, President Barack Obama signed into law largescale patent reform legislation that contains a provision halting the issuance of tax strategy patents.

The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act overhauls the U.S. patent system for the first time in nearly 60 years, changing it from a first-to-invent system, where the first person or company to conceive of an invention gets patent rights, to a first-to-file system, where the rights go to the person or persons who filed with the patent office first.

The law also bans the patenting of tax strategies through a provision inserted by Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Section 14 would apply to any strategy for “reducing, avoiding, or deferring tax liability, whether known or unknown at the time of the invention or application for patent,” and ensure that no future tax strategy patents could be granted by deeming all tax strategies to be “prior art,” meaning that the professed invention is not truly original, thus barring the issuance of a patent.

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BY ALLISON SCHIFF, Trusted Professional Staff

The new electronic document management system recently launched by the New York State Education Department’s (SED) Office of the Professions (OP) can shave days off the licensure approval process, said Daniel J. Dustin, executive secretary of the New York State Board for Public Accountancy. “In the past, an experience evaluation could take up to a week,” said Dustin, part of whose job it is to review CPA license applicants’ experience and education. Continue...

BY CHRIS GAETANO, Trusted Professional Staff

The current format for the standard audit report is just fine the way it is, the NYSSCPA told the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) in a recent comment letter, and, according to Julian E. Jacoby, vice chair of the Society’s Auditing Standards Committee, it soon plans to tell the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) much the same thing. Continue...

In January 2012, the NYSSCPA will propose four individuals to the AICPA’s Nominating Committee to serve three-year terms beginning October 2012 on the AICPA’s 265-person governing council. In addition, one person will be designated by the Society to serve a one-year term as its representative to the council, also beginning October 2012. While day-to-day governance of the
AICPA is handled by the AICPA’s 23-person board of directors, the AICPA Council is the final sounding board for AICPA initiatives. Continue...