Posts Tagged: "House Subcommittee on Commerce"

On Monday, May 11, 2015, IPWatchdog will a co-sponsor a roundtable discussion on patent reform. This event will take place at the law offices of McDermott Will & Emery, which is located directly across the street from the U.S. Capitol. Bernie Knight, a partner with McDermott and a former General Counsel to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, will co-moderate the event along with me. We hope you can join us for this discussion.

The TROL Act was introduced during the 113th Congress and as Subcommittee Chairman Congressman Michael Burgess (R-TX) explained it passed the subcommittee with bipartisan support. Still, Burgess explained during his brief opening statement that he believed “the text could be amended narrowly to achieve better protections for recipients of demand letters.” Despite the previous bipartisan support, Ranking Member Congressman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) said that he cannot support the TROL Act as it is written because “it includes problematic language that does not move us forward.”

Patent reform is back on the agenda when Congress returns from recess this week. On Tuesday, April 14, 2015, at 2:00 pm ET, the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on H.R. 9, more commonly referred to as the Innovation Act. Then on Thursday, April 16, 2015, at 11:00 am ET, the Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade (CMT) Subcommittee of the House Energy & Commerce Committee will also hold a patent related hearing. The subject of the CMT hearing will be the Targeting Rogue and Opaque Letters Act (TROL Act).

Notice letters play an important role in the patent system. Indeed, as the Supreme Court has explained, ”[p]atents would be of little value if infringers of them could not be notified of the consequences of infringement.” Virtue v. Creamery Package Mfg., Co., 227 U.S. 8, 37-38 (1913). Patent law encourages patent holders to take reasonable steps to notify others of existing or pending patent rights and their possible infringement. In some instances, federal patent law requires patent holders to send notice letters to accused infringers to preserve their patent enforcement rights and ability to collect damages. Notice letters and licensing communications can also serve the interests of accused infringers. Once a patent holder has made its rights known, the accused infringer can determine whether to cease the allegedly infringing activities, negotiate a license, or decide to continue its activities based on an assessment of non-infringement or invalidity.