The following post comes courtesy of Gene Quinn, of IPWatchdog and Practice Center Contributor.

At approximately 5:50pm [Thursday] the United States House of Representatives passed H.R. 1249, which is known as the America Invents Act, by a vote of 304-117.  This bill differs from the Senate version of patent reform, S. 23, so there will be no bill going to the desk of President Obama just yet.  There are important differences between the two bills, chief among them is funding for the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  The bill passed by the Senate put an end to the practice of fee diversion, which occurs when the Congress appropriates the USPTO less than they collect in fees.  The excess in the fees collected from users of the USPTO then go to the federal government as general revenues and are used for purposes other than the operation of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Indeed, now the fight will go back to the Senate where Senators will be asked to swallow the changes adopted by the House of Representatives, which seems unlikely.  Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX), who are the respective champions of the bills in the two chambers will likely want to find compromise language that can pass both the House and the Senate.  I have been told that a formal Conference on the bill is unlikely, which would mean that the Senate would need to hammer out language acceptable to the Senate while also being acceptable to the House.

Click here to read the full IPWatchdog publication.

Tags: America Invents Act, Congressman Lamar Smith, fee diversion, H.R. 1249, House of Representatives, Patent Office, Patent Reform, prior user rights, senate, Senator Leahy, us senate, USPTO

This entry was posted on Friday, June 24th, 2011 at 11:30 and is filed under America Invents Act, Patent Reform. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.