Last week Congress overwhelmingly passed milestone patent reform legislation when the Senate approved the Smith-Leahy America Invents Act (H.R. 1249) by a vote of 89-9. SIIA and many of our members have worked diligently toward this goal for more than 6 years, and passage of the bill represents a significant victory for our industries. We believe that this legislation will improve patent quality and reduce (though certainly not eliminate) wasteful litigation over bad patents. In passing the House version of the bill, the Senate rejected amendments that could have essentially derailed the bill by sending it back to the House.
Next on the IP front, rogue website legislation remains a priority in both the Senate and the House. In the Senate, proponents have been pushing for a floor vote on the PROTECT IP Act, which looks likely to occur later in the Fall. We anticipate that the long-awaited House bill, which is expected to be significantly broader in scope than the Senate bill, could be introduced by the end of the month and perhaps as early as next week. SIIA will continue to strongly support legislation to combat rogue websites.
On the privacy front, you’re surely in good company if you can’t keep up with all of the proposed legislation. In addition to Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) reintroducing her Data Breach Notification Act (S. 1408) before the August break, Sen. Blumenthal (D-CT) also introduced legislation last week, the Personal Data Protection and Breach Accountability Act (S. 1535). Chairman Leahy (D-VT) has put these two bills on the calendar for markup this Thursday, along with his legislation, Data Privacy and Security Act (S. 1151).
And those are just the bills being considered in the Judiciary Cmte! The Sen. Commerce Cmte. is also expected to focus on various privacy proposals in the coming weeks–more on this to come soon. While on the House side, Data Security/Breach legislation has temporarily been shelved, while the Committee is planning to take a closer look at privacy issues more broadly, with several upcoming hearings in the weeks ahead. The first hearing, in Chairman Bono-Mack’s subcommittee on Thursday, will focus on “the Impact and Burden of EU Regulation.”
And finally, indications are still that Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) is hoping to advance cybersecurity legislation this fall. Of course, this is contingent on the success of the ongoing bipartisan discussions on the issue. By any account, it’s looking like a very busy four months on Capitol Hill to close out 2011.