Patent law overhaul gets House panel OK
291856
Blog: Measure calls for the most sweeping changes to U.S. patent system in decades, but its path forward could be jeopardized by lingering reservations from other sectors, including venture capitalists and biotech.
335803
The House last night passed the most sweeping rewrite of corporate tax law in nearly two decades, a measure designed to end a nasty trade war with Europe and shower $136
664230
(InfoWorld) - The U.S. House of Representatives hasÂ passed a bill to overhaul the nation's patent system, overcoming objections by many Republicans, small inventors and some labor unions. Passed on Friday, the Patent Reform Act,Â supported by several large tech vendors including Microsoft and IBM, would allow courts to change they way they assess damages in patent infringement cases. Currently, courts generally consider the value of the entire product when a small piece of the product infringes a patent; the bill would allow, but not require, courts to base damages only on the value of the infringing piece. The bill would also allow a new way to challenge patents within one year after they've been granted. The HouseÂ passedÂ the ActÂ by a vote of 225-175. The Senate has not yet acted on a similar piece of legislation. However, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a statement on Thursday saying it opposes the bill. It said that the changes in assessment of damages would "introduce new complications and risks reducing incentives to innovate." The OMB objections raise the possibility that President George Bush could veto the legislation. Large tech vendors have been pushing for patent reform for close to five years. The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the Business Software Alliance, and the Computing Technology Industry Association, all praised the House for passing the bill. House passage is a "significant step toward improving our patent system," said Mark Bohannon, SIIA's senior vice president of public policy. Asked about the OMB's opposition to the bill, Bohannon said recent changes have addressed many concerns. Apportionment of damages, one of the OMB's major concerns, needs to change, he added. "If we don't address the problem, we're not going to improve the system," he said. Many Democrats and some Republicans argued the bill is needed because patent infringement lawsuits have gotten out of hand. It's too easy for patent holders to sue and collect huge damage awards when a small piece of a tech product is found to infringe, supporters argued. The patent system "is getting near broken," said Representative Howard Berman, a California Democrat and primary sponsor of the bill. "Doing nothing is not a good answer for a Congress that wants the economy strong." Opponents argued the bill favors tech giants at the expense of small inventors. "The legislation ... helps a small group of powerful people," said Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican. Representative Marcy Kaptur, an Ohio Democrat, noted that between 1993 and 2005, four major tech vendors supporting the bill paid out US$3.5 billion in patent infringement settlements. But those same unnamed tech vendors had revenues of $1.4 trillion during that time period, she said. Tech vendors want to reduce patent infringement costs "not by changing their obviously unfair and often illegal business practices, but by persuading Congress and the Supreme Court to weaken U.S. patent protections," she said. "We ought to stand up for American inventors." The bill also sets into motion a change in the way patents are awarded, from the first-to-invent system unique to the U.S. to the first-to-file system used by the rest of the world.
428949
In the wake of a recent landmark Supreme Court ruling, patent reform is bubbling toward a boil on Capitol Hill, where advocates in both parties and both chambers are urging timely action on pending legislation and contending with well-financed interest groups on both sides of the issue.
344010
Patents that result from collaboration between universities and companies won new protections from legal challenge under legislation that passed Congress over the weekend.
381938
There's a brawl brewing as Congress works up the most sweeping overhaul of the patent system in half a century.
624911
A U.S. House of Representatives committee voted on Thursday to give the Food and Drug Administration more power to monitor the side effects of medicines after they reach the market.
390667
As debate on patent reform began this morning on the floor of the US House of Representatives, twelve amendments made their way through the Rules Committee, all of which appear to be designed to tweak the bill's language rather than insert any "poison pills" that would ensure its failure.
6196
Patent law impedes innovation, needs reform, say Tech Policy Summit speakers.
247207
U.S. lawmakers returning from their  summer break are expected to consider patent law changes that  have pitted two of America's most invention-dependent  industries against each other.
393099
(InfoWorld) - The House Committee on the Judiciary approved far-reaching legislation to reform the nation's patent system Wednesday. The Patent Reform Act of 2007 largely reflects the IT sector's lobbying effort to curtail lengthy, expensive patent infringement lawsuits, but Wednesday's committee deliberations centered on finding compromises acceptable to opponents â namely the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, manufacturers, and large research universities â so that the bill could win approval. Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., described the current patent system as inefficient, bogged down by inappropriate litigation rules, unreliably funded, and resulting in patents of "questionable quality."Â  The bill would make it harder to secure a patent and easier for rivals to challenge one, and it would change how courts determine an infringed patent's value.Â  However, the version approved by the committee does not go as far on any of those fronts as the IT industry would have liked, and continued negotiations are underway. "Needless to say, our journey has been rugged," Conyers said, urging members to pass the bill out of committee. "We meet here today with the realization that we haven't finished the discussions. The meetings have gone on almost endlessly in some people's minds because compromises are necessary." The proposal Conyers brought forward addresses two of the most controversial provisions under discussion:Â  How courts determine the damages paid to patent holders by infringers and whether challengers are allowed to review patents after they've been granted. Assessing damages Calling the damages provision the most complex issue, the bill's original sponsor, Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., said that allowing judges to determine damages by assessing the value of a component within an invention that was infringed â rather than the value of the entire product â would correct "bizarre and wrong-headed trends" in patent litigation.Â  Originally, the bill mandated that courts calculate damages by such an "apportionment" formula, which the IT industry largely supported.Â  However, the committee agreed to give judges the discretion to decide whether damages should be determined by apportionment, by the market value of the entire invention, or by other means.Â  Several committee members, including Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla., said they would like to see further refinement of the provision because Congress canât predict the consequences of the apportionment analysis. "It would be important to give the court flexibility," Feeney said, adding that the bill could unduly diminish the value of some patents.Â  "We are in a whole new world of uncertainty." Promoting higher quality patents In a move that would make it easier to challenge a patent without going through costly litigation â and simultaneously make it harder for inventors to secure patents â the bill allows the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to review patents after they've been granted. In response to concerns raised by research universities and others, however, it limits the timeframe for such review. The legislation also makes it harder to secure a patent by giving third parties more opportunity to submit information to the PTO during the application process to ensure that only innovative inventions are patented.Â  The bill moves the patent system from a "first-to-invent" to a "first-to-file" system, but in another nod to large universities, the committee clarified a grace period on filing patent applications for inventors who disclose or publish inventions in advance of seeking a patent. Discouraging excessive litigation In an attempt to reduce abuses in patent litigation and discourage frivolous cases from being filed and non-frivolous cases from being unnecessarily drawn out, two other provisions were heavily debated and amended before the bill was approved: The ability of alleged infringers to charge patent holders with "inequitable conduct," and the patent holder's flexibility in selecting a venue for a case. Currently, alleged infringers can argue that a patent is invalid on the grounds that the holder did not sufficiently disclose information about an invention and thereby engaged in inequitable conduct. The often-used tactic is widely seen as a way to divert attention from the merits of the patent itself.Â  The bill narrows the circumstances under which this defense could be used and gives courts a range of options to remedy such conduct when it is found.Â  In an effort to curb forum shopping, the bill restricts patent holders to four options when choosing a venue to file a suit in.Â  However, the bill provides leeway for individual inventors, universities, and "micro entities" to bring patent cases where they reside. Noting that members of Congress cannot predict the consequences of the sweeping reform legislation, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, proposed requiring the PTO to conduct periodic studies of the impact of the most controversial provisions.Â  The proposal was enthusiastically approved. The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to continue deliberating its version of the patent reform legislation Thursday.
754859
A congressional panel approved a bill on Tuesday that would cut lead content in toys and boost the funding and clout of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, following a wave of product recalls.
294997
Emboldened by their election successes, House Republicans changed their rules yesterday to allow majority leader Tom
724627
(InfoWorld) - Technology industry executives are pushing the U.S. Congress to reform the way patents are issued in order to process them more quickly while also making sure they are legitimate. Patent reform was one of the major issues discussed at the Tech Policy Summit Monday in San Jose, California. Patent reform legislation considered, but not passed, in Congress last year is expected to be reintroduced. Among the key provisions sought is the hiring of more patent review specialists by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which one critic at the conference said has a backlog of as many as 1 million applications. Another provision would make it more difficult for so-called patent "trolls" to acquire a patent, claim another company infringed on it and then force the company to pay a settlement in order to keep its business going. Lastly, reform advocates seek an improvement in the quality of patents, pointing to cases where patents are issued for innovations that are not unique. They also propose a post-patent review process. In a speech Monday night at the summit, Deborah Platt Majoras, chairman of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, endorsed the idea of post-patent review. "Patents are not a driver of innovation, they are an impediment to innovation," said Mark Lemley, a professor of law at Stanford University Law School, speaking at the summit. "Everyone has an example of silly patents, such as the cat exerciser laser pen," Lemley said, but the problems with the patent law are more serious than that. Often, one company asserts a patent right against another company and forces that company to stop production until the patent issue is resolved. "The patent holdup forces the company to settle for more money than the patent is worth," Lemley said. There are also delays in the process of approving patents. SAP AG, the enterprise software maker, once had to wait 44 months until a patent application was approved, said Tim Crean, chief intellectual property officer and a member of the Coalition for Patent Fairness, an industry group advocating reform. An official of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said the agency is planning to hire 1,200 patent specialists in fiscal year 2008. The patent office receives half of its patent applications electronically and wants to increase that number. Last year it approved 350,000 patents. But some at the summit want Congress toÂ move cautiously on patent reform. A group called the Innovation Alliance was recently formed to protect companies that patent technology but don't manufacture it. Taraneh Maghame, vice president and emerging technologies counsel for Tessera Technologies, said attempts to limit the rights of companies to defend patent rights could harm legitimate patent protection efforts of some companies. Tessera develops chip packaging technology and licenses it to chip manufacturers, such as Intel. "Not all of the tech industry is behind patent reform," Maghame said. Close to 300 people, including tech executives, advocacy groups and government officials, were expected to attend the Tech Policy Summit, which continues Tuesday.
94396
Government officials, advocacy groups and tech execs gathering at this week's Tech Policy Summit bring a number of issues to the table, but one's rising to the top -- the need for patent reform.
141723
The House Committee on the Judiciary approved far-reaching legislation to reform the nation's patent system Wednesday.
265690
The House of Representatives voted to revise rules for foreign investments in the U.S., seeking to make them clearer for businesses while preserving national security.