House Subcommittee on the Judiciary schedules markup of PTO bill creating refund-based anti-fee diversion system
The House Subcommittee on the Judiciary has scheduled a markup hearing for H.R. 2791, the Patent and Trademark Fee Modernization Act of 2005 (PTFMA), for Wednesday, November 9, 2005.
PTFMA was introduced on the same day as the Patent Act of 2005 and includes the controversial anti-fee diversion provisions that were excised from last year’s major PTO bill, H.R. 1561, on the eve of its passage by way of absorption into the omnibus appropriations bill.
Earlier this year, the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property held a markup hearing on PTFMA. No amendments were made to the bill during that hearing.
Currently, two completely different approaches to addressing the diversion of fees from the Patent and Trademark Office are sitting in Congress. PTFMA includes a complex administrative refund system while the COMPETE Act (S. 1020), which sits idle in the Senate, avoids fee diversion through a fee reduction system. By entering full committee markup, PTFMA maintains its early lead, likely due to the broad support expressed for H.R. 1561 in the last Congress.
You can download both PTFMA and the COMPETE Act in the PTP Patent Reform Library.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment