Opponents of legislation that would overhaul the U.S. patent system have enlisted new allies who may cause majority Democrats in Congress to rethink their support of the proposals. Since late July, three labor unions -- the AFL-CIO, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), and the United Steelworkers -- have sent letters to lawmakers saying they oppose two current patent reform bills. Patent reform opponents say they hope their alliance with organized labor, which has a long history of supporting Democrats, will stall the legislation. But representatives of large tech vendors that are pushing for patent reform say they're confident there will be support for the legislation when Congress returns from summer recess in early September. The committees in both the Senate and the House of Representatives approved versions of a sweeping patent reform bill in July, and House leaders have targeted the patent reform bill for passage by the end of the year.

Posted by GEN-ERIC at 12:07:21 am into the following categories: In The News

---

http://gen-eric.com/patents/htsrv/trackback.php/1292

Name:

Email: (not displayed on this site)

Site/Url:

Comment text:

Allowed XHTML tags: <p, ul, ol, li, dl, dt, dd, address, blockquote, ins, del, a, span, bdo, br, em, strong, dfn, code, samp, kdb, var, cite, abbr, acronym, q, sub, sup, tt, i, b, big, small>

URLs, email, AIM and ICQs will be converted automatically.

Options:
Auto-BR (Line breaks become <br />)
Remember me (Set cookies for name, email & url)