On the recordMarch 1, 2011
I rise today to speak on the Patent Reform Act of 2011, which I understand will be retitled as the ``America Invents Act.'' When this bill was marked up in the Judiciary Committee in 2007 and again in 2009, I voted against it, and I submitted minority views to the committee report for the bill. In the 2009 committee report, Senators Russ Feingold and Tom Coburn joined me in identifying a set of issues that we felt needed to be addressed before the bill was ready for consideration by the full Senate. Chief among these were concerns about the bill's system of postissuance administrative review of patents. Senior career staff at the Patent Office had expressed deep misgivings about the office's ability to administer this system. In response, at the conclusion of the 2009 mark up, Chairman Leahy pledged to invite the Patent Office to work with the committee to address these concerns and to try to develop a system that the office would be able to administer. Chairman Leahy carried through on his pledge and held those meetings later that year. As a result, important changes were made to the bill, eventually resulting in a managers' amendment that was announced in 2010 by Chairman Leahy and then-Ranking Member Sessions. The 2010 managers' amendment, which is also the basis of the present bill, substantially addressed all of the concerns that Senators Feingold and Coburn and I raised in the 2009 Minority Report.
