June 8, 1995 is when the U.S. implemented changes in order to conform with GATT/TRIPS. The biggest change in patent law associated with that date is that patent terms went from 17 years from the issue date to 20 years from the filing date.
Implications of this change:
One of the biggest implications of this change is on continuation practice. When filing a continuation (continuation, divisional, continuation-in-part), the patent term is calculated as 20 years from the earliest filed patent in the continuation series. Therefore, it is generally not to the advantage of the application to file long series of continuation applications, unless there is a critical piece of prior art to avoid.
Additionally, if a post June 8, 1995 application is a U.S. nationalization of a PCT application, the PCT date may be used to calculate the 20 year term.
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