March 4, 2008
Bang for Bucks
Senators Leahy & Hatch keep pounding their old tom-toms for the Patent Deform Act, but it's just to pacify their patrons; the dancers have moved to another tune.

A Patent Prospector confidential source reports:

The latest from Washington is that (Senate Majority leader) Reid has said the bill won't come to the floor before April. The consensus is that if it doesn't pass then, it's lost in the election meat grinder. Leahy has said he won't bring up patent reform again next year, although that may be a hammer to get people to compromise because Reid doesn't want to devote floor time to anything that's not going to sail through. The lobbyists tell me that if Leahy had the 60 votes to break a filibuster, he would have brought it to the floor by now.

The source continues:

One interesting aspect is the significant role that the universities have played because of their tech-transfer offices. The tech transfer guy at University of Nevada-Reno has had Reid staffers visit his office three times to see if they can't satisfy him. (No luck so far.) The president of the University of Kentucky has 5 patents himself and strongly believes the bill should be killed. Senator McConnell (minority leader) can't get his mind changed. Senator Hatch has had at least three meetings with two or three of the state's largest universities to discuss the bill, but can't win them over.

Posted by Patent Hawk at March 4, 2008

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