The plan undermines Biden’s message – it’s a distraction
Pauline M. Pelletier and Eric K. Steffe July/August 2016 Senior Counsel - Intellectual Property & Litigation at Amgen and director in Sterne Kessler’s Biotechnology & Chemical Practice Group, “The Politics of Patent Law: Why Patent Reform Failed in 2015 and Prospects for 2016” American Bar Association https://www.americanbar.org/groups/intellectual_property_law/publications/landslide/2015-16/july-august/the_politics_patent_law_why_patent_reform_failed_2015_and_prospects_2016/
First, 469 seats in the U.S. Congress are up for election on November 8, 2016, along with the presidency. The simple fact is that patent reform, as a topic of national conversation, is not well-suited for stump speeches and televised debates. The concepts are not easily communicated to the general population, whose votes are the ones up for grabs at the moment. And, in contrast to the AIA—which passed under the auspices of a forward-looking, bipartisan “job creation” agenda—patent litigation reform has adopted the rhetoric of punishing bad actors, the goal being to “combat the scourge of patent trolls on our economy without burdening the companies and universities who rely on the patent system every day to protect their inventions.”12 That is a fairly difficult position to convey without first explaining what the patent system is, how it works, what a patent troll is, who they are harming, and how all that affects the economy. Thus, because of the general election cycle, the failure to gain passage in 2015 (in contrast to the failure to gain passage in almost any other year) may have graver consequences for supporters of patent litigation reform, given this inevitable shift in national attention. All of which underscores the tactical victory achieved by opponents of the bill in getting the July 2015 vote postponed.