Patent Reform Off The Table For Now

Yesterday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) announced that he was taking his patent reform bill off the agenda. As a result, it is unlikely that Congress will pass patent reform legislation this year.

Senator Leahy's bill, the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act (S. 1720), had been the leading Senate bill directed at curbing abusive litigation by patent trolls. Yesterday's shelving of the bill follows repeated delays over the past two months in the Judiciary Committee's anticipated markup of the bill, as Committee members worked behind the scenes to resolve contentious issues. (See our previous alert here.) Senator Leahy had suggested in recent weeks that the parties were close to a compromise, but his press release yesterday stated there was "not sufficient support behind any comprehensive deal."