By Donald Zuhn --
H.R. 1249 Could Reach House Floor in June
In Friday's IPO Daily News, the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) reported that "[m]any observers" believe the House version of the America Invents Act (H.R. 1249) will reach the House floor for a vote sometime in June. While the House Judiciary Committee ordered an amended version of the bill to be reported last month, only the introduced version of the bill is currently available on the Library of Congress' THOMAS site. The IPO report also indicated that House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) expects to propose additional amendments to the bill when it comes to the floor for a vote, and will likely craft a bill that the Senate would be willing to accept.
Delaware Senator Encourages House to Move Quickly on H.R. 1249
Delaware Senator Chris Coons (D), writing in The Huffington Post earlier this month, used the postponement of the prioritized examination (or Track I) portion of the Enhanced Examination Timing Control Initiative to push House leadership to bring H.R. 1249 to the floor for a vote ("Shortchanging Our Inventors Is Slowing Our Economic Recovery"). Noting that the recently delayed Track I program would have brought in an additional $40 million in patent fees (10,000 applications x $4,000 prioritized examination fee), Sen. Coons (at right) explained that the Track I program would have allowed "[i]nventors with time-sensitive applications . . . obtain faster consideration without slowing down the processing of applications on the normal track." The Senator reflected on his own experience, stating that "[a]fter working for eight years at a manufacturing company where patents were the lifeblood of our business, I know that Track One would have made a real impact on our economic recovery and the workforce-in-waiting of engineers, tradespeople, laborers, and others ready to get to work."
According to Sen. Coons, however, Congress got in the way of the Track I program by funding the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office at its 2010 level, thereby "shortchanging the agency by $85 to $100 million and forcing [Director] Kappos to pull the plug on the Track One program." By denying the USPTO its 2011 budget request, which included $40 million to implement the Track I program, Sen. Coons noted that the $40 million the program would have created would have been diverted to the Treasury. The Senator suggested that the America Invents Act would eliminate this problem by ending fee diversion. He concluded by expressing his hope that "Speaker Boehner move[] quickly to bring H.R. 1249 up for a vote on the House floor," adding that "[e]very day we fail to act is another day that hundreds of thousands of innovations -- and the millions of jobs they can create -- remain nothing more than unread good ideas on paper in someone's inbox."
Patent Reform Result of "Fierce" Lobbying
An article in The Washington Post reports that the Senate's passage of the America Invents Act was the result of more than 100 lobbying firms representing 267 different organizations ("Patent Reform Measure Ignited Fierce Lobbying Effort"). According to the piece, the first-inventor-to-file provision has generated the most interest among the organizations lobbying Congress. Among the most active lobbyists, the article pointed to the Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform, which gave more than $1.4 million to the lobbying firms Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and the Palmetto Group, and the Coalition for Patent Fairness, which spent more than $2 million on lobbyists from Elmendorf Ryan; Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock; the Franklin Square Group; Mayer Brown; and Patton Boggs.
In the current political environment, I can't imagine the House's version of so-called patent reform getting passed by Congress, unless it does away with the more controversial post-grant, prior-user, and grace period provisions (for starters). Of course, stranger things have happened. But I still don't understand why certain legislators are pushing to pass such a comprehensive bill with so many contentious provisions, when they could much more easily (and, arguably, more justifiably) enact a patent reform bill that mandated nothing except an end to fee diversion. Oh, wait, I do understand -- lobbyists.
http://www.aminn.org/patent-reform-act-2011-s23
Posted by: patent litigation | May 16, 2011 at 05:47 PM