Senate Passes Three Bills that Affect Intellectual Property
29 Jun 2004
The U.S. Senate approved three bills that would affect intellectual property rights on June 25. Two of the bills (the PIRATE Act and the ART Act) would increase the prosecution and punishment of people who violate copyright law, and one (the CREATE Act) would grant patents to groups that collaborate on research.
The PIRATE Act (S. 2237) would encourage the Justice Department to bring civil charges against suspected copyright violators and to pursue fines normally reserved for criminal proceedings. This bill would authorize the Justice Department, which normally dedicates its resources to criminal cases, to receive $2 million for the civil anti-piracy campaign. The other copyright bill, the ART Act (S. 1932), would impose criminal fines on people who illegally make video recording of films in movie theaters.
The CREATE Act (S. 2192) would amend federal law to expressly allow the government to approve patent applications on inventions that have been made collaboratively among multiple organizations. The legislation, formally called the Cooperative Research and Technology Enhancement Act, or CREATE Act, seeks to override a 1997 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. This ruling said that an invention created by a research team comprised of scientists from multiple organizations may not be patentable because confidential information shared among scientists during research could render an invention “obvious,” and thus not patentable, unless a single owner claimed the invention. The legislation would override this ruling by treating inventions that have been made collaboratively as if they had a single owner, so long as the collaborators signed a formal, written agreement before the inventions had been created. The House approved an identical bill (H.R. 2391) in March.
The Senate leadership attempted to bring all three bills (CREATE Act, PIRATE Act, and ART Act) up for vote last month, but one anonymous senator put a “hold” on the bills, effectively blocking votes on them. John C. Vaughn, executive vice president of the Association of American Universities, said that the anonymous senator was using a hold on the CREATE Act as leverage to win concessions from Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), on the PIRATE and ART Acts, although he does not know what concessions the senator sought. The senator lifted the holds, however, when the leadership offered assurances that the PIRATE Act would be fully debated on the floor, said Philip S. Corwin, a lobbyist for the company that runs the KaZaA network.
The PIRATE Act has not been introduced in the House of Representatives, but the ART Act has been folded into a House bill, the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act of 2004 (H.R. 4077).
Cynthia Lan, SIPPI Intern
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