Hopes for a Senate floor debate over the Patent Reform Act of 2007 (S.1145) were shattered in April when Senate negotiations over the language of key provisions collapsed, removing the bill from the floor schedule indefinitely. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), one of the Acts sponsors, intended to introduce a revised version of the bill to the Judiciary Committee during the second week of April. Leahys plan failed when he could not reach agreement on several provisions with Arlen Specter (R-PA). Without Specters support, Leahy is unlikely to win passage of the bill. "We are not going to do a patent bill now," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
On April 9, 2008, Specter issued a press release stating that he could not support the bill as currently written. "The principal sticking point," said Specter, "is the issue of how to assess damages in patent infringement lawsuits." Specter said that the legislators thought they had reached agreement, "but the language continued to shift, so we do not yet have a deal on the package." The bills proposal towards apportionment of damages has provoked intense debate between lawmakers as well as interested companies and patent attorneys.
Leahy responded to Specter with disappointment on April 10, complaining that "just a handful of words have stalled the Senates debate on this important patent legislation." "We have been working on these reforms for years," Leahy declared, "[t]housands of hours have been spent in negotiations to address the concerns of 100 Senators, hundreds of Representatives, and dozens of stakeholders." Using the past tense that seemingly signals the end of his effort, Leahy declared, "[t]his was a missed opportunity."
Other prominent figures shared Senator Specters criticism of the current bill. Paul Michel, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, has been a vocal critic. Speaking in a session for patent lawyers at the ABAs annual Intellectual Property Law Conference on April 10, Judge Michel explained that he was baffled about Congress desire to change the method by which patent damages are currently calculated. The issue is "greatly misunderstood," said Michel, because the reality is that judges hearing patent cases routinely take into account the value of individual patents when instructing juries and in overturning excessive damage awards granted by juries. With respect to the rest of the bill, Michel stated that he would prefer that Congress avoid any reform that affects the judicial process until the judiciary has an opportunity to make its own changes. "Congress ought to wait and see if ultimately the judgments are good enough," Michael said, "I would not say that Congress should never act on courthouse problems, but it could wait."
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