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House to Hold Patent Reform Hearing Today

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The House has provided a designation for its new patent reform bill, H.R. 1249. The bill was formally introduced on March 30. The House held hearings on the bill and heard testimony from the following witnesses: PTO Director David Kappos, Steven Miller of Procter & Gamble, Mark Chandler of Cisco, Steve Bartlett of Financial Services Roundtable, and John Vaughn of the Association of American Universities.

The house bill can be found at: http://www.ipo.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=29174. It does not contain the judicial gatekeeping functions for damages that the Senate bill features. It is difficult to say, at this point, what will happen to the damages provisions that are in the Senate bill - will they find their way into a bipartisan bill? Only time will tell.

Stay tuned. We will keep you posted on new developments.