Posts Tagged: "Congressman Defazio"

House Aviation Subcommittee Holds Hearing on Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), Flying Cars and Passenger Drones

The development of UAS vehicles for delivering packages or passengers could go a long way in alleviating issues of congestion occurring along the nation’s roadways. Aviation subcommittee ranking member Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA) spoke to these possibilities, citing a recent industry scorecard which found that U.S. drivers spent 40 hours each year stuck in traffic during peak hours, leading to an economic loss of $300 billion in lost productivity. Larsen noted that there were currently more than 50 passenger drone concepts in development and was the first of a series of Representatives attending the hearing to note that such technologies would make the science fiction world of The Jetsons a distinct reality.

Here they go again – this time with the Patent SHIELD Act

Indeed, the bill’s co-sponsor acknowledges and states “[t]his bill combats the problem of patent trolls by moving to a ‘loser pays’ system for software and hardware patent litigation.” However, the bill’s sponsors fail to explain what makes the frequency, risk, or social harm of “egregious” patent lawsuits any different than those of other “egregious” civil suits in America so as to single out patent right enforcement for a special treatment under civil law. In fact, the following graph shows that in the last four decades the number of patent lawsuits filed per year has risen at slower pace than other IP lawsuits or when compared to all Federal civil suits. Patent lawsuits now constitute a little over 1% of all Federal civil suits – the same fraction as that in the mid 1970’s.

New Patent Reform Takes Swing at Patent Trolls

Yesterday Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) introduced the Saving High-tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes Act, or SHIELD Act for short. If ever passed into law the SHIELD Act would ostensibly adopt a variation on the English Rule, where the losing patent owner pays the legal fees of the victorious patent defendant when there was no “reasonable likelihood” that the patentee would prevail in the litigation. If theAct required a claim chart upon filing, applied across the board to all those who would seek to manipulate the patent system and not just computer/software patents and defined “reasonable likelihood of success” I would be on board with both feet.  As it is, I am on board with one foot and hopefully that improvements can be made to this important piece of legislation.