Sensenbrenner Tries To Derail Patent Bill
Former House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner on Wednesday created some commotion at the mark-up of a patent reform bill. Although H.R. 1908 eventually passed the House Judiciary Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property Subcommittee, the Wisconsin Republican claimed the bill was "not ready for prime time."
He said the panel should work out controversial components of the measure before handing it off to the full committee. If H.R. 1908 moves forward with stakeholders still unhappy, the bill would arrive on the Senate's doorstep, where one of two things will happen. "Either the Senate won't act on it… or the Senate will end up writing the final bill. Both alternatives are not acceptable," Sensenbrenner said.
Subcommittee Chairman Howard Berman, D-Calif., said it was not his intention to "ram things through with lots of people unhappy." Keeping the legislation stuck in subcommittee would not provide the incentive for players in the debate to hash out their differences, he said. Berman had hoped to introduce an manager's amendment but H.R. 1908 passed the panel without the change.
Update: Berman said in a speech on Thursday morning that Sensenbrenner "has decided to go back to his obstructionist mode now that he's not chairman." He said the lawmaker's insistence that problems be worked out in the subcommittee could have put policymakers in the same boat as they were in with the Copyright Act of 1976. Work on that mandate began more than a decade before it passed and Berman said he did not have the stomach for 12 years of patent reform negotiations.
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