Yesterday, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-AL) announced that a new agreement to patent reform legislation had been made.

Sen. Leahy’s Patent Reform Act of 2009, (S. 515) passed through the Judiciary Committee thanks to Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s deft ability to bring parties on both sides of the controversial damages provisions together to agree on compromise language –- language that the NAM was supportive of because it ensured that no one sector would get a bonanza at the expense of another business sector.

Despite that success, S. 515 got hung up on other less high-profile, but just as important issues. After nine months of negotiations, another agreement (that contains the same compromise language on damages) appears to be in the making. While the official amendment-in-the-form-of-a-substitute language has yet to be released, we’re told that there’s been substantial movement on a number of issues.

While litigation reforms are very important, key to all manufacturers’ concerns is how will the US Patent & Trademark Organization fare – will there be an end to the diversion of their fees into the general treasury? Will USTPO Director David Kappos have the ability to make rules and set new fees? What’s being done to improve patent quality and decrease the time it takes to have a patent issued? The National Academy of Sciences issued a report in 2004 highly critical of how resources were being allocated to the USPTO, and offered a number of fixes that would not only strengthen the USPTO, but in the long run, strengthen our nation’s manufacturers’ ability to innovate.

As soon as we know what the new bill language looks like, we’ll make sure that the NAM’s members find out. More news as it comes in over the transom…

(Marc-Anthony Signorino is technology director for the National Association of Manufacturers)

We note the evocation of President Lincoln in this week’s inaugural activities, but there’s one place where a President Obama — or any President — simply will not be able to emulate Abraham Lincoln’s accomplishments.

As we were reminded during a quick trip Friday to the recently reopened Smithsonian Museum of American History, Lincoln was the only President to have patented an invention. Not even Thomas Jefferson (though that might have been a matter of timing, since the U.S. Patent Office only got its start in 1802).

From the U.S. Patent Office, its Kids Pages:

As a young man, Lincoln took a boatload of merchandise down the Mississippi River from New Salem to New Orleans. At one point the boat slid onto a dam and was set free only after heroic efforts. In later years, while traveling on the Great Lakes, Lincoln’s ship ran afoul of a sandbar. These two similar experiences led him to conceive his invention. Lincoln received Patent #6,469 for “A Device for Buoying Vessels Over Shoals” on May 22, 1849.

The invention consists of a set of bellows attached to the hull of a ship just below the water line. On reaching a shallow place, the bellows are filled with air and the vessel, thus buoyed, is expected to float clear. The invention was never marketed, probably because the extra weight would have increased the probability of running onto sandbars more frequently. Lincoln whittled the model for his patent application with his own hands. It is on display at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History.

In 1858, Lincoln called the introduction of patent laws one of the three most important developments “in the world’s history,” along with the discovery of America and the perfection of printing. During the Civil War, he took a personal interest in new weapons, advocating the adoption of ironclad ships, the observation balloon, the breech-loading rifle, and the machine gun. Lincoln declared that “The patent system added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius.”

Good luck, President Obama. In your spare time ….