Last week, we learned that the Senate Judiciary Committee had reached a compromise on a number of issues and had reached the point where they introduced an updated version of the bill (S. 515). Presumably, the Committee is seeking to get the bill to the Senate floor for debate and believes, based on the compromises, that it has the votes to pass.
Earlier this week, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), chair of the Senate Committee on Small Businesses and Entrepreneurship, introduced a new bill (S. 3089) that would require the Small Business Administration to conduct a study of the effects the proposed changes to the patent law would have on small businesses. She wants to determine whether the changes would hinder small businesses and independent inventors, particularly the change from a first-to-invent to a first-to-file system.
She further noted that small businesses represent 99.7% of employers and employ one-half of the US labor force. Small businesses in the technology sector produce 13 times more patents per employee than large businesses. The new bill is styled the Small Business Patent Data Collection Act of 2010.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to have a study of the effects of proposed legislation after it has passed and gone into effect. It seems unlikely that Congress would reverse itself and undo the change to something as drastic as this at a later date. This could signal that Sen. Landrieu and perhaps others are not yet ready to support the Senate’s patent reform bill.
