On March 30, 2011, the House Judiciary Committee introduced its own (as yet unnumbered) version of the Patent Reform Bill, known as the "America Invents Act" (H.R. 1249) (http://tinyurl.com/4zw9zlm). The House version has many of the same provisions of the Senate bill (http://tinyurl.com/4n4m8gv), although there are some differences. Some differences include: the House version provides a longer time period for a party to initiate post-grant opposition or inter partes reexamination proceedings after being sued in district court; and the House version retains the current "substantial new question" standard for triggering inter partes reexamination proceedings, whereas the Senate version requires a higher standard. While the introduction of the House version increases the chance of some patent reform occurring this year, it is far from certain whether it will happen and in what form.
A more complete analysis of the Senate version of the America Invents Act (S. 23) is available in the March 9, 2011 edition of Foley's Legal News Alert: Intellectual Property, available online at http://tinyurl.com/4sq5thf.
For additional information on patent reform, visit Foley.com/patentreform.
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