Weak June Job Report Spurs Interest in Passage of Patent Reform

Last Friday’s disappointing June Jobs Report has ratcheted up the already significant pressure on the Obama Administration to address the struggling economic recovery. Meanwhile, the Senate has worked through the traditional July break in an effort to reach a compromise on the looming debt ceiling deadline (August 2nd) 

What does all this mean for Patent Reform? 

A few weeks back, the House passed H.R. 1249. This bill is now in the hands of the Senate for a possible conference to reconcile differences with Senate bill S.23.  As I pointed out previously, such a conference seems unlikely. The Senate is now quite busy trying to arrive at a compromise on the debt ceiling issue. Once an agreement is reached (no telling when that will happen, but it will), shortly thereafter, it is expected that the Patent Reform bill will be sent to the White House in present form.

While there are still some hts/id=18022/”>very vocal critics of the bill, there is very little political upside to stalling or otherwise revisiting a bill that is of little interest to the voting masses. Instead, the state of the economy, and Fall elections will drive the push for Patent Reform, which has been consistently presented to the public as a “zero cost jobs bill.”