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Patent Reform Bill Passes: Medicines Company to Party Like They’re Rebecca Black

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Well, it looks like it’s all over but for the crying.  The Senate voted 89 to 9 to pass the Patent Reform Act bill [2] yesterday.

The Senate rejected proposed amendments to the house bill H.R. 1249 [3], approved by the House last June, including:

  • An amendment by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, to go back to the Senate financing version;
  • An amendment to strip out a provision from the bill that clarifies a method of calculating the deadline for applications to extend a patent. Cheers, MDCO!
  • An amendment by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-WA, that would have created a transitional program for consideration of business method patents.

The bill, known as the America Invents Act, changes the method for determining the priority of patent applications to a “first to file” system from the long-standing “first to invent” method.  Hold on to your butts, folks.

Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin’ forward to the weekend