“Today the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate held a hearing on the Leahy-Lee patent reform proposal, ‘Protecting Small Businesses and Promoting Innovation by Limiting Patent Troll Abuse,'” Florian Müller reports for FOSS Patents. “After the recent fast-track passage of the Goodlatte bill by the House of Representatives, the key question at this juncture is what position the Senate will take on reform. The National Journal even wondered whether the current push for patent reform could survive the winter.”
“Based on today’s hearing, I believe patent reform will remain high on the agenda after this winter, and while there are calls by some politicians, such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), to take more time and hold more hearings, I think the push for reform has enough momentum that something will probably happen in 2014 — but it won’t be broad,” Müller writes. “There won’t be a law unless the Senate and the House reach a consensus, a fact that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) strongly urged reform advocates to consider. Sen. Whitehouse advised the reform movement to be flexible and not to ‘vindicate [its] ire at the deplorable conduct of these patent trolls at the expense of getting a bill through the Senate.'”
Much more in the full article here.