Senate kills patent reform

Last December, the House of Representatives voted 325-91 in favor of the Innovation Act, an anti-patent troll bill. The White House strongly supported the bill and Wired called President Obama the Great Slayer of Patent Trolls. Nearly six months later, the bill is still stuck in the Senate. What happened?

Judiciary panel Chairman Patrick Leahy from Vermont has been negotiating behind the scenes. There is opposition to patent reform, as discussed in a previous post, especially from "independent inventors", who, in my opinion, may or may not actually be patent trolls. Politicians, rightfully or not, fear that the reform will make it hard for inventors to capitalize on inventions. Unfortunately, when patent reform stalls, the trolls do not:

6092 patent lawsuits were filed in 2013, a 12.4% increase over 2012. Of the top ten filers of patent lawsuits in 2013, every single one was a patent troll.

Today, Senator Patrick Leahy took patent reform off the agenda of Senate Judiciary Committee, effectively killing the bill for the time being. In a press release, he wrote:

Unfortunately, there has been no agreement on how to combat the scourge of patent trolls on our economy without burdening the companies and universities who rely on the patent system every day to protect their inventions.  We have heard repeated concerns that the House-passed bill went beyond the scope of addressing patent trolls, and would have severe unintended consequences on legitimate patent holders [emphassis added] who employ thousands of Americans.

As this is recent news, I'm sure we'll hear more about it. I wonder if this was a deliberate attempt by Senator Leahy to appease the patent troll lobby, which includes respectable entities like universities and pharmaceutical companies. The House passed the bill with an overwhelming majority. It seems odd to kill it the Senate.

While we must respect the rights of "legitimate" patent holders, all too often this is used as a euphemism for the rights of patent trolls.