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PublishedApril 11, 2014

Roundup of This Week’s Patent News: April 11 Edition

Good morning!  Progress was made on patent reform this week, but not enough to get a vote before the Senate went on recess for two weeks.

A Senate Judiciary Executive Business Meeting scheduled for Tuesday was postponed, as was a potential markup for yesterday, although a “tentative deal” was announced Wednesday.  Chairman Leahy put out a statement Wednesday night saying that although members of the Senate Judiciary Committee “have made enormous progress” and they “now have a broad bipartisan agreement in principle,” patent reform would be delayed until after recess.  Chairman Leahy “will circulate a manager’s package the day we return from recess, and the Judiciary Committee will consider that legislation the first week we are back.”

In other news, at CCIA’s 2014 Washington Caucus on Wednesday, FTC Commissioner Julie Brill gave an update on the FTC’s 6(b) study examining PAEs, but emphasized that “Congress should not wait.  Further patent reforms are clearly warranted now.  I believe Congress should act as soon as possible.”  For more on her speech, check out Patent Progress’s retweets of the CCIA account on Wednesday.

And on Monday, the Main Street Patent Coalition put on a great event on the need for patent reform, demonstrating how many non-tech industries are being affected by patent trolls.

Did we miss something?  Questions or suggestions?  Feel free to leave a comment below, mention us on Twitter (@PatentProgress), or email us: patentprogress[AT]ccianet[DOT]org

Ali Sternburg

, CCIA

Ali Sternburg is Vice President, Information Policy at the Computer & Communications Industry Association, where she focuses on intermediary liability, copyright, and other areas of intellectual property. Ali joined CCIA during law school in 2011, and previously served as Senior Policy Counsel, Policy Counsel, and Legal Fellow. She is also an Inaugural Fellow at the Internet Law & Policy Foundry.

She received her J.D. in 2012 from American University Washington College of Law, where she was a Student Attorney in the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic, President of the Intellectual Property Law Society, Senior Symposium Chair and Senior Marketing Manager for the Intellectual Property Brief, and a Dean’s Fellow at the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property.

She graduated from Harvard College in 2009 where she studied Government and Music, wrote her senior honors thesis on “Theoretical and Legal Views on U.S. Government Involvement in Musical Creativity Online,” and interned at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

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