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This sounds terrible:

The other bedrock changes to the US patent system envisioned in the original bill remain, including a shift from a "first to invent" system to the "first to file" system used in other countries.

So I do the required prior-art search, pretend not to find anything, and patent an idea that's been out there forever. No one can claim prior art.

Great going, guys.

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No, even under "first to file" you cannot patent something where publicly accessible prior art exists. You can never patent something if it already exists in the public. The difference in first to file is that you can't pull up internal, private (i.e. NOT public) documents after the fact and say "look, here's proof I did it first" even though nobody could access that document.

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