ASME Celebrates Signing of Standards Bill

In June, President Bush signed into law H.R. 1086, the Standards Development Organization Advancement Act of 2004 (Public Law 108-237).

The legislation, passed unanimously by the House of Representatives and the Senate, would exempt standards development organizations (SDOs) that comply with certain Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission registration rules from the treble damages provisions of the nation's anti-trust laws. ASME and other major standards developers have sought passage of the bill for more than three years.

Organizations such as ASME that develop the nation's health and safety standards are often named as defendants in anti-trust lawsuits simply as a way to increase any potential award, not because they are actually guilty of an anti-trust violation.

Defending against these suits, the vast majority of which are ultimately dismissed, costs standards developers such as ASME hundreds of thousands of dollars that could be used to update and improve safety standards.

By exempting standards developers from the treble damages provisions of the anti-trust laws (current law automatically triples damage awards in successful anti-trust cases), the legislation makes it less likely that SDOs would be frivolously named as defendants in anti-trust suits.

In floor remarks prior to House passage of the bill, House Judiciary Committee member Robert Scott (D-Va.) explained that "without the relief in this bill, SDOs might be reluctant to work together for fear of treble damages liability. Such an outcome would be extremely harmful to the economy."

The bill was co-sponsored in the House by Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Ranking Democratic Member John Conyers (D-Mich.) and in the Senate by Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Ranking Democratic Member Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).

Full text of H.R. 1086 can be accessed online at http://thomas.loc.gov.

White House Science Office to Work on Nanotechnology Standards

The Office of Science and Technology Policy within the Executive Office of the President has embarked on an effort to develop voluntary consensus standards for the burgeoning nanotechnology industry.

OSTP Director John Marburger told reporters recently that his office will call upon the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) to coordinate with standards developers such as ASME with an eye toward coming up with a standard or standards regarding such issues as common nomenclature and definitions.

A spokesman for OSTP said he expects the effort to proceed along the same lines as the Homeland Security Standards Panel, also run by ANSI, which brought together standards developers, trade associations, professional societies, and industry to help DHS get up to speed on the standards development process.

— Francis Dietz
ASME Government Relations

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