Legal News

Advancing Patent-Reform Bill Making Some Strange Bedfellows

By Ashby Jones

Will patent reform actually, finally, get off the ground?

It’s an issue that’s been kicking around for years, though Congress has never gotten around to voting it through. Now, however it seems like the patent planets might be aligning.

Earlier this month, the Senate passed by a 95-5 vote a bill that would overhaul the patent system. This week, lawmakers in the House will start considering the same bill. Click here for Amy Schatz’s story in Monday’s WSJ; here for a recent LB post on the Senate’s passage of the bill.

The Senate proposal would bring the U.S. into line with other countries by instituting a system that grants patents to the inventor who is “first to file” with the U.S. Patent Office. The U.S. currently has a “first to invent” system, and some businesses complain that it results in too much litigation from individuals who claim they were first to an idea even though they don’t have a formal patent.

Backing the Senate bill are drug, technology and other industries that have been divided on patent issues in the past but are now aligned, in part because thorny issues like what constitutes excessive damage awards have been settled by U.S. courts.

But despite the lopsided Senate vote, the legislation faces determined opposition from diverse interest groups, including small businesses, some big Silicon Valley players and conservative groups, such as the American Conservative Union and the Gun Owners of America, which say the legislation will hurt individual inventors.

“The pro and con forces on patent reform don’t clearly break down in industry lines,” said James J. Mullen, an intellectual-property partner at law firm Morrison & Foerster.

The Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform, which includes such companies as General Electric Co., Motorola Corp. and GlaxoSmithKline, supports the Senate legislation. “We thought the Senate bill was in the small red dot in the middle of the target,” said Bill Mashek, a coalition spokesman.

Two coalitions of Silicon Valley companies, which include Apple, Google and Oracle, disagree, saying they can’t support the bill without changes.

“We’re very concerned that the system and reform be aimed at improving patent quality and giving [the Patent and Trademark Office] the resources to do its job,” said Mark Chandler, the general counsel at Cisco Systems.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 28, 2011 (boomark / email).