In This Issue:
- Progress Toward Comprehensive Patent Reform Stalls
- As Attention Turns to a Border Supplemental, a Twelve Bill Omnibus Seems Certain
- Highways, Taxes, and Partisanship: The Next Crisis
- Senate Intelligence Committee Approves Cybersecurity Bill
- You May Not Know: Congress Issues Subpoenas, But Also Receives Them
- Terrorism Risk Insurance: To Be Continued?
- Excerpt from - Progress Toward Comprehensive Patent Reform Stalls:
On May 21, 2014, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) announced that he was removing patent reform legislation from the Committee's agenda, effectively eliminating any chance for Senate consideration this year. While a comprehensive bill might be off the table, it is still possible that Congress could take up and pass legislation to address abusive patent litigation behavior before the end of the year.
Patent Demand Letter Legislation -
Earlier this month, the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade approved the Targeting Rogue and Opaque Letters Act of 2014 ("TROL Act"), legislation to prevent the issuance of fraudulent patent demand letters. Efforts to address this form of abusive patent litigation behavior have continued to gain significant traction among business and consumer stakeholder groups, and multiple states have already taken legislative action in the past year. According to the TROL Act's author, Subcommittee Chairman Lee Terry (R-NE), the bill provides the following protections for demand letter recipients: 1) It requires the sender to provide enough information for the recipient to appropriately respond; and 2) It bars the sender from making false or misleading statements. Given the initial positive feedback the bill has received from Members, as well as a broad array of stakeholder groups, it is possible that the TROL Act could be considered and approved by the full House Energy & Commerce Committee before the August recess, paving the way for House floor consideration in the Fall.
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