Dive Brief:

• Legislation to protect companies against so-called “patent trolls” is unlikely to move forward this year. It was removed from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s agenda on Wednesday.

• Committee chairman Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) favored the bill but couldn’t move it forward after opposition from several interests, including pharmaceutical companies, universities, biotechnology companies, who feared its effects on protections for legitimate patents, and trial lawyers.

• In a bipartisan vote in December, the House of Representatives passed a bill in that required patent trolls to be specific about alleged patent infringement, specifically name who would benefit financially from a patent lawsuit, make losing patent trolls pay defendants’ legal fees, delay paperwork requirements until a lawsuit is determined to be valid, and protect users of technology related to the patents from lawsuits.

Dive Insight:

Retailers have been among the greatest sufferers of Patent Assertion Entities, also known as “patent trolls,” and the failure of the Senate bill to get out of committee is a setback for them. For now, without the protective law from Congress, the courts remain the only resort for retailers who want to fight back against patent trolls. That leaves retailers like Newegg that aggressively defend against patent trolls to establish common law and precedent in this area.