Patent Overhaul Bill Headed to Senate Floor
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bipartisan measure designed to speed up the patent system. The committee voted 15-0 on S-23. Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, voted present. The committee delayed a vote on a separate bill by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to extend until December 2013 three provisions of the Patriot Act scheduled to expire Feb. 28.
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The Patent Reform Act “will allow our inventors and innovators to flourish” without adding to the deficit, said Leahy, the committee’s chairman. The bill is supported by Republicans, the Patent and Trademark Office, labor unions and the National Association of Manufacturers, he said. The measure aims to speed up the patent application process, which currently takes three years. It would move the U.S. to a first-inventor-to-file system and is billed as improving patent quality by creating a “first window” post-grant opposition proceeding and speeding up administrative challenges to the validity of a patent.
Leahy said the committee would take up the Patriot Act bill at its next markup, not yet scheduled. An expiring provision on “roving wiretaps” allows law enforcement to use one surveillance order to cover tapping of all modes of communications used by the person targeted, including phone lines, cellphones and the Internet.
Committee members disagreed Thursday over how long to extend expiring provisions. Grassley said he would prefer a permanent extension on grounds that temporary extensions create operational uncertainty for public safety organizations. Grassley said he planned in the afternoon to introduce a bill providing for permanent extensions, supported by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga. But Feinstein said a three-year extension with no changes to the law made sense given the short time left for reauthorization. A three-year extension would bring the provisions up for renewal again “at the same time as the bill itself comes up for review,” she added.
Leahy invoked Senate Rule XIV Thursday afternoon so his Patriot Act bill can skip a committee vote if he can’t gain consensus there. Leahy said he’s “committed to moving this legislation through the Judiciary Committee at our next business meeting,” but “with just a few short weeks before these authorities are set to expire, I also want to ensure that the Majority Leader is able to turn to this bill for debate and consideration if he decides to do so.”