On the recordSeptember 8, 2011
I appreciate the comments of our friend from Alabama, Senator Sessions, regarding his amendment to strike section 37 of the patent reform bill, but I disagree with him on substantive terms, and I ask our colleagues to look carefully at the substance of this amendment and the importance of this amendment with respect to precedent not for one company from Massachusetts or for one entity but for companies all over the country and for the application of patent law as it ought to be applied. The only thing section 37 does--the only thing--is it codifies what a Federal district court has already said and implements what the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is already doing. There is no breaking of new ground here. This is codifying a Federal district court, codifying what the Patent Office has done, and, in fact, codifying common sense. It is putting into effect what is the right decision with respect to how we treat patents in our country. Section 37 is, in fact, a very important clarification of a currently confusing deadline for filing patent term extension applications under the Hatch-Waxman Act. Frankly, this is a clarification, I would say to the Senator from Alabama, that benefits everybody in the country. In fact, this is a clarification which has already been put into effect for other types of patents that were once upon a time treated with the same anomaly. They rectified that.…
