The Senate Judiciary Committee appears unlikely to have...
The Senate Judiciary Committee appears unlikely to have final language ready on a compromise manager’s amendment to the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act (S-1720) in time to mark up the bill Thursday, several industry observers told us Wednesday. Negotiations on…
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the compromise language continued Wednesday, a Senate Judiciary aide told us. A markup of S-1720 remained on the agenda for the committee’s executive business meeting Thursday, which is to begin at 10 a.m. in 226 Dirksen. Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., had hoped to release the text of the manager’s amendment as soon as the Senate returned from recess Monday (CD April 29 p6). Work on the manager’s amendment has been complicated in part by the Supreme Court’s rulings Tuesday in two patent cases on the application of fee-shifting rules, two industry lobbyists told us. The two cases -- Highmark v. Allcare Health Management System and Octane Fitness v. ICON Fitness & Health -- collectively loosened fee-shifting rules, which patent revamp advocates said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was applying too stringently. The rulings drew praise from several patent revamp advocates, including the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and the Internet Association. The rulings are a “bump in the road” because “they're in the same sandbox as the legislation,” said Cathy Sloan, CCIA vice president-government relations, in an interview. “As drafters of the legislation, you have to adjust for that. They're not big changes, but you can’t just pretend the new precedent isn’t there. You have to draft around it a little bit.”