Stefan Mileschin

US senators seem to be doing their best to protect patent trolls and allow them to continue stifling the IT industry with their revenue grabbing anti-innovation antics.

A law which is so good for the country and industry should have been easy to get through the senate, but it has been postponed four times in the past two weeks as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Senator Patrick Leahy seeks to nail down votes in support of the bill.

Now Congress will stop work for two weeks for a much-needed break and the bill has failed to get out of the committee stage. The danger is that there are just 39 days left before the Senate's August break. Congress will return to work in September, but with an election campaign in full swing at that point, it's unlikely that any significant legislation will pass.

Leahy's office has revealed that a chairman's preferred draft of the bil will be circulated to the committee members the day they return from their two-week break. The committee will consider a bill the first week that Senators are back, which is the week of April 28 – he hopes.

Leahy said that he has made enormous progress in getting the bill through and there was a broad bipartisan agreement in principle," said Leahy.

However apparently this is a "complex issue "and needs additional time to draft the important provisions that have been the subject of discussion.

http://news.techeye.net/business/us-...-patent-trolls