Patent Trolls Rejoice! Reform Bill Likely Dead As Sponsoring Sen. Patrick Leahy Takes It Off Agenda

After the U.S. House of Representatives
passed a patent reform bill in December 2013, many hoped that
the Senate would soon respond in kind. But after stalling for
several months, Senate patent reform efforts suffered a likely
fatal blow today after Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, removed the patent bill he had
sponsored from the committee’s agenda. 

“Very disappointing that patent reform efforts came to a halt
with @SenatorLeahy‘s
decision today,” the R Street
Institute, a D.C.-based think tank that has been following
patent reform efforts, tweeted this afternoon.

In
his announcement, Sen. Leahy cited “lack of sufficient support”
as the reason for taking
the bill off the committee’s agenda. 

We have been working for almost a year with countless
stakeholders on legislation to address the problem of patent trolls
who are misusing the patent system. This is a real problem facing
businesses in Vermont and across the country.

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 who employ thousands of Americans.

I have said all along that we needed broad bipartisan support to
get a bill through the Senate. Regrettably, competing
companies on both sides of this issue refused to come to agreement
on how to achieve that goal. 

Leahy concluded that he hoped they were able to return to the
issue next year, which sounds like the legislative equivalent of
“I’ll text you sometime.” 

The Senate patent reform bill wasn’t lacking for popular
support. Hundreds of companies—including tech giants such as Google
and Microsoft—urged
Senators to act on the bill, and
42 state and territorial attorneys general support it. The

White House undertook its own (minor) patent reform efforts in
February.

“I am surprised and disappointed that the Senate Democrat
leadership is not willing to move forward on a bill that we’ve
worked on so hard and were ready and expecting to mark up
tomorrow,” said
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in a statement. “We put in a good
faith effort to get to this point, and it’s too bad that the bill
is being pulled from the agenda.”