Grassley News
Floor Statement on Proposed Budget Resolutions and Senate Leadership... Read More >>
Grassley: Drug Trafficking in West Africa Fuels Instability... Read More >>
Spurring Innovation, Creating Jobs
This week the Senate passed bipartisan legislation to update U.S. patent laws for the first time in decades. The legislation now goes to the President to be signed into law.
As Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over the U.S. Patent Office, I was a lead cosponsor of the bill which passed overwhelmingly, 89-9.
The United States is the most inventive country in the world, and a transparent and up-to-date patent system will only enhance the job creating ingenuity and entrepreneurship our country is known for. Without a top-notch patent system, entrepreneurs have less incentive to create new technologies and hire new workers.
This legislation will make the United States patent system more effective and efficient. It will enhance transparency and patent quality, and improve certainty in the patent process. It will help the Patent and Trademark Office cut its backlog and process patent applications in a more expeditious manner.
The bill also includes a provision I’ve been working on for several years with Senator Max Baucus. The provision says a strategy for reducing, avoiding or deferring tax liability cannot be considered a new or non-obvious idea, and therefore, a patent on a tax strategy cannot be obtained. This ensures that all taxpayers will have equal access to strategies to comply with the tax code.
The United States can’t “out-innovate, out-educate and out-build” our competitors when America’s best and brightest inventors are out-of-luck with a federal patent system woefully out-of-date and out-of-touch with the way businesses are run in the global economy. This new law will help unleash America’s inventors, scientists, researchers and investors from a patent system that’s stuck in the last century, and it will help spur our long-term prosperity.
September 9, 2011
This week the Senate passed bipartisan legislation to update U.S. patent laws for the first time in decades. The legislation now goes to the President to be signed into law.
As Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over the U.S. Patent Office, I was a lead cosponsor of the bill which passed overwhelmingly, 89-9.
The United States is the most inventive country in the world, and a transparent and up-to-date patent system will only enhance the job creating ingenuity and entrepreneurship our country is known for. Without a top-notch patent system, entrepreneurs have less incentive to create new technologies and hire new workers.
This legislation will make the United States patent system more effective and efficient. It will enhance transparency and patent quality, and improve certainty in the patent process. It will help the Patent and Trademark Office cut its backlog and process patent applications in a more expeditious manner.
The bill also includes a provision I’ve been working on for several years with Senator Max Baucus. The provision says a strategy for reducing, avoiding or deferring tax liability cannot be considered a new or non-obvious idea, and therefore, a patent on a tax strategy cannot be obtained. This ensures that all taxpayers will have equal access to strategies to comply with the tax code.
The United States can’t “out-innovate, out-educate and out-build” our competitors when America’s best and brightest inventors are out-of-luck with a federal patent system woefully out-of-date and out-of-touch with the way businesses are run in the global economy. This new law will help unleash America’s inventors, scientists, researchers and investors from a patent system that’s stuck in the last century, and it will help spur our long-term prosperity.
September 9, 2011