The legislative debate over patent legislation began again yesterday with the reintroduction of the Innovation Act by Chairman Goodlatte. In a piece that appeared in The Hill on February 5, Covington’s Aaron Cooper, formerly Chief Intellectual Property and Antitrust Counsel for Senator Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, encourages “industry participants [to] work together, and with Congress, to forge a consensus.” Cooper observes that, “Legislation is exceedingly difficult to enact, even in the best conditions.” He writes that one lesson from enactment of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act is that “the path to forging consensus is not always fast or easy, but it is a necessary one” to turn patent legislation into law. “Other paths,” he concludes, lead “only [to] talking points.”
