The head of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), said on Tuesday that a bipartisan bill to fix America’s dysfunctional patent system failed this spring after it ran into the “DC version of quicksand known as the Senate,” but that 2015 will be a different story.

Speaking at an intellectual property event, Goodlatte — who was the House sponsor of the doomed bill known as the Innovation Act — suggested that the new Republican majority in the Senate will ensure that the new version of the law passes. This would be a different outcome than last time around when Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) sandbagged the bill, which had the support of President Obama, reportedly at the behest of patent trolls and trial lawyers.

A patent scholar Dennis Crouch notes, the question is how far the new law will go. In particular, real reform will depend on changing the economic asymmetries in patent litigation that allow…