Posts Tagged: "TROL Act"

The Inventor Protection Act: Needed Momentum or More Harm than Good?

Recently, the Inventor Protection Act, H.R.6557, was introduced to Congress.  It’s a very well intentioned piece of proposed legislation.  However, it may actually do more harm than good to efforts to strengthen patent rights in the aftermath of the AIA. We need to fix what is wrong with the patent system for everyone, not merely carve out exceptions for a few.  Is H.R.6557 a step in the right direction, gaining momentum for stronger patent property rights for everyone, or will it harm the ability to reach that goal?  We think the answer is clear that H.R. 6557 as written doesn’t do what the patent laws were intended to do.

STRONGER Patents Act Introduced in House, Seeks to Strengthen a Crippled Patent System

In a telephone interview, Rep. Stivers noted that, while the AIA was intended as legislation that would make the patent system more efficient, the resulting differences in standards between the PTAB and the district courts have led to a large number of appeals from the PTAB. “Instead of living up to its billing as being more efficient and quicker, the PTAB has become just another stop which is more complicated, more expensive and exactly the opposite of what it was intended to do,” Stivers said. Although he noted that he was not an advocate of getting rid of the IPR process entirely, Stivers felt that the PTAB had to use the same standards of evidence used by district courts. “If that happens, then the PTAB can live up to the potential that it was sold on and you can get the same ruling no matter where you go,” Stivers said.

Myths about patent trolls prevent honest discussion about U.S. patent system

A $1 trillion a year industry not wanting to pay innovators less than a 1% royalty on the innovations they appropriate (i.e., steal) for their own profits seems like a terrible price to pay given the national security and economic consequences of forfeiting our world leadership to the Europeans and Chinese… Google and Uber are locked in a patent battle over self-driving automobiles, so does that make Google or Uber a patent troll? What about General Electric, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Whirlpool, Kraft Foods, Caterpillar, Seiko Epson, Amgen, Bayer, Genzyme, Sanofi-Aventis, and Honeywell, to name just a few?

Misleading patent troll narrative driven by anecdote, not facts

”An anecdote is a snapshot, a one-dimensional shard of the big picture. It is lacking in scale, perspective, and data,” authors Steven Levitt and Stephan Dubner write. I was struck by how well the dynamic of anecdote vs. story captures the heated Washington debate over patent legislation we have witnessed in the past few years. The ”patent troll” narrative — fueled by anecdotal tales of mom-and-pop operations snared by fraudulent patent suits and the image of ugly green trolls paraded from the House floor to the White House – became the conventional wisdom on patents almost overnight. The only ”data” offered to support the narrative were compiled from surveys with unscientific methodologies, nonrandomized survey bases and ill-defined notions of a ”troll” that swept in universities, small inventors and anyone who owned a patent but didn’t manufacture, market and distribute the related product.

A patent reform conversation with Senator Coons and Congressman Massie

Yesterday I moderated a Google Hangout on the topic of patent reform, which was sponsored by the Innovation Alliance’s save the inventor campaign. Joining me for the conversation was United States Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the driving force behind the STRONG Patents Act, and Congressman Thomas Massie, an inventor and patent owner who is a member of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. Our wide ranging conversation addressed whether patents promote or inhibit innovation, the most problematic provisions in the pending patent reform bills, whether patent reform is even necessary, and the inevitable reality that a push for patent reform will remain on the agenda for the foreseeable future.