Patent Reform 2005 — It is Over

The Patent Reform Act of 2005 will not be enacted this year.  There is still a possibility of a back-door push to include some provisions in an omnibus appropriations bill, but at this point it is unclear what those provisions would be and whether they would be successful.

The failure of reforms this year has several sources:

  1. Lack of time: In the Senate, the committee handling intellectual property law is the same as the judiciary committee.  This term has been filled with long debates on judicial appointments that left little time for patent reform.
  2. Patents are not yet hot: It is still difficult to get Washington excited about patent law.  Historically, reform measures have taken years to build up enough inertia to get through both the House and Senate.
  3. Overreaching: The proposed reforms ended up being overreaching in a way that pitted major lobbying groups against one another.  This impasse eventually killed the possibility of moving forward with substantive changes this year.

One of the proposed measures would have eliminated the best mode requirement.  Dale Carlson of Wiggin & Dana has written a short article explaining his reasons for keeping best mode. [Article].

5 thoughts on “Patent Reform 2005 — It is Over

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    Patent Reform Act of 2005 (H.R. 2795)

    之前看到很多新聞,都講到Patent Reform Act的事情,東一點西一點,也不記得自己到底看了什麼,哪些又跟現在的工作比較相關,也實在懶的去找整個草案來看,正好公司請來合作的美國專利律…

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