Patent Law Practice Center

Hearing on Examiner Fraud Leaves No Resolution

In mid-September, the House Judiciary Committee held what seemed like it was going to be an oversight hearing to address the allegations of timekeeping fraud by patent examiners made in the Inspector General’s recent report. Prepared statements released in advance of the hearing talked tough, but that was pretty much it. Insofar as getting to the root of the problems identified in the IG report the hearing turned out to be a big, fat nothing.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) (pictured left at the hearing) defended the Office in his prepared remarks, explaining that there were flaws with the methodology of the IG study, which make the conclusions unreliable. For example, it is entirely possible that patent examiners were indeed working while they were not logged into the Patent Office computer systems. After all, examination is a job that requires a lot of reading and contemplation, much of which might occur without being logged into the server. Of course, that, at best, means there is no way to know whether patent examiners are working or not, which is why the IG report recommended the sensible step of requiring patent examiners to log into the Office computer systems whenever they are working.

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Congress passes Defend Trade Secrets Act by overwhelming margin

On April 27, 2016, the United States House of Representatives passed S. 1890, the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (DTSA), by a vote of 410-2. Only Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Congressman Justin Amash (R-MI) voted against the bill.

The  DTSA was authored by U.S. Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) (pictured left) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and cosponsored by nearly two-thirds of the Senate. The bill was previously passed by the Senate on April 4, 2016, by a vote of 87-0, and will now move on the White House. Even before the Senate passed the DTSA, the Obama Administration voiced strong support for the bill. President Obama is expected to quickly sign the bill into law, which will make it the the first-ever comprehensive federal trade secret law.

Once signed by President Obama, the DTSA will amend the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 to create a federal civil remedy for stealing trade secrets and give innovators another procedural avenue by which to protect their intellectual property from theft.

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