A top pharmaceutical industry lawyer is set to be installed as the next head of the US Patent and Trademark Office.

The Obama Administration intends to nominate Philip Johnson, the head of intellectual property at Johnson & Johnson, to be the next director of the US Patent and Trademark Office. The selection is a setback for the tech sector and a seeming 180-degree turn on the patent issue for the Obama administration, which was pushing Congress to pass patent litigation reform just months ago.

The nomination was made public over the weekend, when Hal Wegner, a patent lawyer who authors an e-mail newsletter, said Johnson was the "anticipated nomination," citing "reliable sources." Wegner saw an "overwhelmingly positive reaction to this development among insiders," but for the tech sector, the choice of Johnson is about as bad a choice as could be imagined.

A lobbyist who had worked on patent reform issues independently confirmed the impending Johnson nomination.

Johnson has been an outspoken opponent of patent reform efforts for years. In the run-up to the recent failed reform effort, Johnson was particularly vocal. He was active as the head of the Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform, often called 21C, a coalition of large pharmaceutical, chemical, and manufacturing concerns. Johnson has been chief patent counsel at Johnson & Johnson since 2000 and its top IP lawyer since 2009. Before working at J & J, Johnson was a partner at the law firm Woodcock Washburn for 19 years.

Large pharmaceutical companies, including Johnson & Johnson, have been the most vigorous opponents of patent reform. The 2007 reform effort sputtered out because of pharma opposition, and it was big pharma that killed the bill again this year.

It's a big turnaround for President Barack Obama on the issue. Obama mentioned patent trolls in his State of the Union speech in January, and his support was key to the bill advancing as far as it did.

Longstanding opposition

Johnson has a history of blocking change to patent laws that's nearly a decade long. Back in 2006, he urged Congress not to change patent damages law.

In the recent debate, Johnson became very active once the House passed the Innovation Act , which was lauded by reformers. 21C detailed its position to the Senate Judiciary in a December submission from Johnson , objecting to nearly every aspect of the bill. Johnson even opposed small parts of the measure that weren't seen as controversial.

For instance, Johnson opposed heightened pleading requirements that would have forced patent trolls to file more detailed information about the alleged wrongdoings of defendant companies, not the five- or six-page bare-bones complaints that basically say, "you infringed."

Johnson even opposed changes that were thought to be innocuous to operating companies, such as transparency requirements that would force trolls to reveal the true ownership of the patents they were suing over.

"Some of the information required to be disclosed could pertain to competitively sensitive information that should not be required to be disclosed in a public document," complained Johnson.

Johnson and Johnson signed the main opposition letter threatening to kill the bill, stating that "many of the provisions assume that every patent holder is a patent troll."

The proposed law would "substantially weaken all patents," stated the letter. Johnson & Johnson, along with dozens of other pharmaceutical, chemical, and manufacturing companies, officially withdrew their support. "If the provisions on discovery, customer stay, fee shifting and any associated measures, pleadings, and enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission"—in other words, the whole bill—"do not achieve the appropriate balance we will oppose the legislation," the coalition letter stated.

The letter also warned Senators not to continue with an approach that "clearly favors a business model that does not rely on patents and tilts the balance in favor of patent infringers."

Six weeks later, the bill was dead.