Patently Unfair

Congress has spent the last six years cobbling together a bill to overhaul the way the strapped and struggling U.S. patent system works. This week, lawmakers are on the cusp of passing the America Invents Act, which has been championed in the Senate by Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, and in the House by his counterpart Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas. But like many inventors during their process of creation, Congress seems to have lost a clear vision of the problem it was trying to solve. For some time, patent-reform advocates have pushed for a…

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