Potential Intellectual Property Issues On The Table In The 115th Congress

Over the past decade, intellectual property issues have often taken center stage in Congress.  The America Invents Act, passed in 2011, changed patent landscape in many ways, most notably by changing the U.S. patent system from "first to invent" to "first inventor to file" and by creating new post-grant proceedings—such as Inter Partes Reviews and Covered Business Method Reviews—in which the validity of issued patents may be challenged.  In 2016, Congress enacted the Defend Trade Secrets Act, creating for the first time a federal cause of action for trade secret misappropriation.  And there is a long list of unenacted bills implicating IP rights over the last several years: the PATENT Act, the STRONG Patents Act, the TROL Act, the Innovation Act, the Trade Protection Not Troll Protection Act, the SHIELD Act, and the Stop Online Piracy Act—to name just a few.  Because IP issues do not tend to break along traditional party lines, many of these bills were co-sponsored by