Posts Tagged: "patent troll"

USPTO Director Andrei Iancu participated in a fireside chat, titled “The Crossroads of Technology and Innovation,” hosted by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) at its sixth annual Innovation Policy Day on Tuesday, March 12 at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Sitting with Director Iancu was host Michael Hayes, Sr. Manager of Government Affairs for the CTA. The chat was quite short and briefly touched on topics such as celebrating the 10 millionth-issued patent, the preparedness of the patent system for the future, artificial intelligence and patent eligibility, and the availability of patenting for all peoples. Then, in what some may consider to be an unscrupulous move, Hayes introduced the narrative of patent trolls.

Representative Steve Stivers (R-OH) and Representative Bill Foster (D-IL) introduced the Support Technology & Research for Our Nation’s Growth and Economic Resilience (STRONGER) Patents Act, which would in part restore injunctive relief as a remedy for patent infringement, in the U.S. House of Representatives in March of last year. While there has been much talk about closed-door discussions taking place on Capitol Hill recently around fixing Section 101 law, the House has not yet re-introduced the STRONGER Patents Act, and has thus far been focused on other issues this term. But Rep. Stivers seems confident that the Act has a chance this term, and says that this could be the consensus legislation the House needs. Read below for more on Rep. Stivers’ thoughts about patent reform in the 116th Congress, where the America Invents Act went wrong, and how we ensure the U.S. patent system is restored to number one.

n an age with instantaneous commentary on social media, the wheels of justice in courts seem to move at a glacial pace, especially in patent infringement lawsuits in the fast-paced smartphone industry. Yet, courts have been methodically receiving and meticulously reviewing the evidence in Qualcomm’s lawsuits against Apple Computer for infringing its patents. And, like the tortoise who eventually wins over the speedy hare, the judgments are just now coming out against Apple. This past December, a Chinese court issued a preliminary injunction against Apple selling iPhones that infringed Qualcomm’s patents. A week later, A German court issued an injunction against Apple selling iPhones in that country that infringed Qualcomm’s patents. Last week, a jury in the United States found Apple liable for infringing Qualcomm’s patents and awarded Qualcomm $31 million in damages.

What happens when technology convergence fundamentally changes your patent risk profile? What do you do when your customer demands broad intellectual property (IP) indemnification and your supplier provides almost none? Industries that clear patents as a standard practice are integrating technology from industries that specifically do not clear patents. If this sounds like a potential train wreck, well, it is. We recently completed a survey of 16 companies’ activities with respect to freedom to operate. In that study, we found substantially divergent patent risk mitigation strategies. For example, as you would expect in the chemical industry, companies did full patent clearance searches of their new molecules and processes—they wanted freedom to operate. That means they searched in all their major markets for any patents they might infringe prior to releasing new products. In contrast, high technology companies did no clearance search prior to product launch, but they adopted other techniques for reducing their overall risk—they wanted freedom of action. For professionals in each Industry, their respective risk mitigation strategy makes sense. But how can it be that in one industry people review and clear patents and in another they do not? The answer lies in the specific patent risks faced in each industry, and we will explore some of those risks.

On the morning of February 14, the New Hampshire Supreme Court will hear what could be one of this year’s most important set of arguments related to patent ownership taking place outside of the federal judiciary. At 10:30 AM that morning, the Court will listen to oral arguments in Automated Transactions, LLC and David Barcelou v. American Bankers Association et. al. to determine whether the New Hampshire Superior Court erred by dismissing a defamation case after finding that the term “patent troll” isn’t necessarily pejorative. Automated Transactions and David Barcelou alleged that the defendants in the action made defamatory statements by referring to them as a “patent troll.” This exposed them to hatred, ridicule and contempt, which caused them to be ignored by automated transaction machine (ATM) operators across the country and injured their legitimate business of licensing patents that they developed and that were issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The appeal argues that the Superior Court did not examine the full context of the reference to the term “patent troll” when making its determination, dismissing the action before the plaintiffs were able to present any evidence or proof and depriving them of their rights to a trial on the merits.

When you see a docket report with a patent lawsuit filed by a non-practicing entity (NPE), do you think it’s just another ‘patent troll’ taking advantage of the system? Or would you be willing to consider that underlying every patent litigation is a human story of invention, which is the embodiment and manifestation of an innovator’s aspirations and sacrifices? These human stories are too often marginalized in the ‘patent troll’ debate. One such story is that of Wayne Evans. His life took him from the depths of poverty and loss to the struggles of being an entrepreneur raising a family and, ultimately, to late-in-life success as an inventor, innovator, and author.

This marks Part III of my four-part interview with IBM discussing the state of innovation and the U.S. patent system from the standpoint of a company that has obtained the most U.S. patents for 26 years in a row. Below, I continue the conversation with Mark Ringes, Vice President and Assistant General Counsel for IBM, and Manny Schecter, Chief Patent Counsel for IBM, picking up on the topics of prior art and patent trolls, moving on to a comparison of the U.S. patent system with the rapidly evolving systems of China and Europe and, finally, examining how companies are refining patent prosecution practices to address the Section 101 chaos.

Occasionally, we hear people say, “brokered patents are all junk.” This begs the question, “are operating companies and non-practicing entities (NPEs) spending hundreds of millions of dollars buying junk patents?” Luckily, the short answer is no. We know clients have successfully bought and used brokered patents to substantially alter their licensing and litigation posture at a lower cost than the alternatives. We also know that patents on the brokered market rank higher than average patents. So why this disconnect? We are victims of our own cognitive biases and the behavioral economic traps that make it harder for buyers to find and buy patents… When only a small fraction of what we are looking at is ultimately interesting to us, our brains can trick us. Using a structured decision-making process together with some tools can overcome those biases and allow us to identify and buy the patents that fit our business needs.

Rather than frustrate innovation, Maurer and Haber found that patent assertion entities have research and development expenditures which, on average, are twice that of U.S. high tech firms… Public PAEs do not appear to operate in a manner consistent with the hypothesis on patent trolls, which includes the view that PAEs own patents which have no value and that they file frivolous lawsuits that amounts to a tax on innovation.

Remarkably, in what I believe amounts to Orwellian “doublespeak,” those who’ve been advancing the patent troll narrative argue that they do so because they are actually pro-innovation. That by their highlighting, relentlessly, the dangers in the patent system, they actually encourage innovation. Right! … Look, people are free to express any point of view, and they can certainly advocate for weakening our patent system. But they should be up front about it. Those who spend their time and money relentlessly preaching the dangers of monsters lurking under the innovation ecosystem, and who work exclusively to identify only faults in the system, are unconvincing when they argue that they are doing so for purposes of increasing innovation.

Facebook is asserting a series of patents the company has acquired from other firms, making its actions similar to those of non-practicing entities (NPEs) and remarkably patent troll-like. After all, we have been told time and time again by those who have advocated for patent reform and a systematic dismantling of the patent system that a telltale sign of a truly bad actor like a patent troll is that the patents were not the subject of homegrown innovation, but were rather acquired from true innovators and then used to sue others. That, however, is precisely what Facebook is doing here. 

On August 1st, a jury verdict entered in the Southern District of California awarded $145.1 million in reasonable royalty damages to Canadian IP licensing firm Wi-LAN in a patent infringement case against Cupertino, CA-based consumer device giant Apple Inc. The jury determined that Apple infringed upon claims of two patents owned by Wi-LAN.

Congresswoman Lofgren is now opposing a rule change she previously endorsed as an original co-sponsor of a bill that would have changed the claim construction rule in exactly the same way proposed by Director Iancu… But how is adopting a rule that would have already been the law had Lofgren had her way possibly frustrate or disregard Congress? Of course, we aren’t supposed to ask that question. Once the “patent troll” boogeyman card is played everything else is supposed to fade away.

Principe and Rudroff unfortunately regurgitate much of the misguided dialogue, which has done nothing to serve this country except to decimate its patent system in recent years. In the view of the authors, patent trolls, or patent assertion entities (PAEs) (which the authors note is the less pejorative term), provide no market value and often enforce software or business method patents which have questionable validity. Of course, it is worth noting that in its 2016 study on PAEs, the Obama Federal Trade Commission called the term “patent troll” both unhelpful and prejudicial, and also specifically recognized that PAEs can and do play a valuable role in the market. So the conclusions of Principe and Rudroff are not supported by even an FTC study commissioned for the purpose of condemning patent trolls. 

U.S. patent policy has collapsed at the hands of a Supreme Court preoccupied with a boogeyman not present in a single dispute they were asked to adjudicate. This means this Supreme Court has allowed a carefully crafted PR narrative to influence virtually every patent decision over the last 12 years when many in the industry believe the patent troll nothing to be nothing more than an opportunistic phantom created by a relatively small number of companies hell-bent on weakening patents to the point where they are simply not enforceable… But today we have come full circle. The United States increasingly forbids patents on cutting edge biotechnology, medical, software, analytics, big data mining, artificial intelligence and other innovations. For this we have only the Supreme Court to thank.