CapitolVermont recently became the first state to pass legislation specifically directed to patent issues (a law which, as noted by Camilla Hrdy at Patently-O, has interesting federalism implications and may or may not run into federal preemption issues).  But even more patent-related activity has been taking place here in Washington, DC.  Over the last few months, several bills of varying scope and substance have been introduced to address various patent- and patent-litigation-related issues.  We thought it’d be useful to round up links to all of them in one brief post.

  • S.866, the Patent Quality Improvement Act of 2013 (introduced May 6, 2013 by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY))
    • As noted by Patently-O, this bill would expand the USPTO’s “Covered Business Method” program to cover non-financial business methods (and would make it permanent rather than transitional).

Given the relatively high degree of attention that patents have been receiving, there may be more to come from other Congressmen (for example, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who is the Senate Judiciary Chairman, is expected to introduce something soon).  It will be interesting to see if and how these wide-ranging, diverse proposals will converge into one cohesive, comprehensive piece of legislation — and how long that may take.