Senate Judiciary Committee Unanimously Approves Patent Reform Act of 2011

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved by a 15-0 vote Feb. 3 a new patent reform bill, S. 23, after agreeing to Chairman Patrick J. Leahy’s (D-Vt.) manager’s amendment and an amendment that effectively abandons the committee’s attempt to codify jurisprudence on willful patent infringement.

The bill’s key elements—defining a gatekeeper role for federal court judges in evidence supporting patent infringement damages and adding a post-grant patent opposition procedure at the Patent and Trademark Office—remain intact from the compromise agreement in the committee announced last March (79 PTCJ 537, 3/12/10; 79 PTCJ 560, 3/12/10).

The bill is not yet scheduled for a vote on the full Senate floor. However, patent reform has proceeded much faster in the Senate in the 112th Congress than it did two years ago. S. 23 was introduced almost two months earlier, and the judiciary committee did not conduct a hearing on the matter this time around.

The U.S. House of Representatives is likely to take up the issue before the full Senate does, in any case. A Feb. 11 hearing in the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee handling the issue is scheduled…

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