Posts Tagged: "Senator David Vitter"

Committee chairman Senator David Vitter (R-LA) began the hearing by speaking about the importance of a strong patent system to small businesses all over America, as well as the importance of those small businesses to the U.S. economy. Vitter remarked that small businesses have provided two-thirds of all net new jobs since the 1970s and they also produce 16.5 times more patents per employee than larger enterprises. Recent legislation causing major changes in the country’s patent system, including the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), have made it more difficult to enforce patent rights. “It’s essential to remember that many legitimate owners of intellectual property do not manufacture anything but nonetheless have legitimate claims of patent infringement against other parties,” Vitter said. He was also wary of the “staggering rate” of decline in patent value during recent years, stating that during the past four years patent values have dropped by as much as 80 percent.

Small businesses and independent inventors are critical to revolutionary advancement of American technology. They file over 20% of the applications at the USPTO, and their patents are more likely to encompass breakthrough inventions, rather than incremental change. While Congress has considered a range of legislative reforms, the other branches of government have also been moving forward with challenges confronting the patent system. It is important for America that we get this right. Thoughtful legislation can further improve the patent system and lead to more job creation and economic growth as long as we remember that it is the patent system fuels America’s innovative spirit.

Donald Trump argued at the New Hampshire debate that our nation’s infrastructure would not happen without eminent domain. While economic development as a justification for eminent domain has been severely criticized, there does not seem to be a similar criticism associated with stripping property rights from patent owners in order to allow technology adopting infringers to distribute what they did not themselves innovate without paying the property owner for the privilege.

Members of both major American political parties from both the Senate and the House of Representatives came together at a press conference held on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 14th, to oppose the most recent round of proposed patent reform bills in either chamber of Congress. Meanwhile, rumors are swirling that suggest that the Innovation Act (H.R. 9) has been tabled for the rest of the summer in the House of Representatives.

Having to defend their patent in post grant reviews such as an IPR can easily cost patent owners between $700,000 to over $1 million when the subject matter of the patent under challenge relates to the biological or pharmaceutical sciences, due in part to the need to cast a wide net for relevant prior art, according to experienced practitioners like Brad Olson, a partner with Barnes and Thornburg, LLP. Such expenses are particularly threatening to new companies finding the patents that drive their business under attack just as they are desperately trying to raise money for their very survival. Given the track record of IPR’s as “patent death squads” potential investors or licensees can’t be blamed for waiting until the reviews are completed to finalize pending deals.

At the end of a three-hour long hearing held by the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary this Thursday, June 4th, S.1137, the proposed legislation known as the PATENT Act, was approved to move to the floor of the United States Senate by a 16-4 vote of the Senate committee. Proponents of the bill lauded the bipartisan support which brought the bill committee approval. Interestingly, a small but vocal bipartisan minority has developed, a couple of whom have pledged to continue debate aspects of this legislation which they fear will pose a threat to American innovation.

Senators repeatedly brought up the Hatch-Waxman legislation. One after another Senators discussed how inter partes review (IPR) of pharmaceutical patents at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has, in an unanticipated way, upset the delicate balance reached in Hatch-Waxman to ensure that generic drugs would come to market quickly. Those familiar with IPR and Hatch-Waxman will undoubtedly recognize that this concern is entirely misplaced. A successful IPR would result in the immediate death of patent claims, which would inure to the benefit of all generics, which would in fact result in generics entering the market quickly.

According to Grassley’s office, the amended PATENT Act will provide important reforms for the way that the Patent Trial and Appeals Board (PTAB) of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) operates. For instance, the managers amendment would: (1) Require the PTAB to apply the claim construction standard used in federal district court (i.e., the Phillips standard) and further requires the PTAB to consider if claims have previously been construed in district court. (2) Makes explicit that for purposes of PTAB adjudications patents are presumed to be valid, although does so retaining the current law providing that the petitioner has the burden to prove a proposition of unpatentability by a preponderance of the evidence. (3) Makes clear that the Director has discretion not to institute an IPR or PGR if doing so would not serve the interests of justice. (4) Allows patent owners to submit evidence in response to a petition to institute an IPR or PGR, and petitioners to file a reply to respond to new issues. (5) Directs the PTO to modify the institution process so that the same panels do not make institution and merits decisions. (6) Directs the PTO to engage in rulemaking in order to institute a Rule 11-type obligation in IPR and PGR proceedings.

Significant consensus was reached between representatives of small business and universities at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship on March 19, 2015. The hearing was held to take testimony relating to proposed reforms to the U.S. patent system. The day’s discussion prompted Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) to make the comment that the argument over…

In the Senate the Judiciary Committee is where any action relating to intellectual property reform will be played out. Key Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee, including Senators Grassley, Cronyn and Hatch, are on record as saying that more patent reform is on the horizon. Thus, the question is not if the Senate will take up patent reform during the 114th Congress, but rather how quickly it will be brought up in Committee. Additional patent reform in 2015 seems like a nearly foregone conclusion, but when everyone starts thinking that patent reform has a way of going no where fast, or at least that has been the history of patent reform in Congress.