Another IP Fight in Congress

Senators Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy, nursing their wounds from the derailment of patent reform legislation this year, are still hoping to make their mark on IP law in this session of Congress. Bipartisan copyright legislation addressing orphan works was on a fast track this spring, emerging from the Senate Judiciary Committee in mid-May with unanimous consent, and appeared to be heading straight for the floor of the full Senate in June.

But then came speed bumps. Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford Law School, an icon of the free culture and copyright reform movements, wrote a damning op-ed piece about the legislation in The New York Times. Lessig’s criticisms exposed a rift among allies. The legislation proposed by Hatch and Leahy is strongly supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where Lessig served as a director until recently, and was developed in consultation with Public Knowledge, a nonprofit that works to defend citizens’ digital rights. (PK’s founder, Gigi Sohn, is a friend of Lessig and was honored by EFF in 2006.)