Posts Tagged: "patent enforcement"

Thomas Edison and the Consumer Welfare Benefits of Patent Enforcement

Would you believe the following scenario could happen under our patent system? An inventor of a fundamental technology receives a patent less than three months after filing; despite the public disclosure of the patent, industry contemporaries fail to appreciate the invention’s significance for nearly two years; once appreciated, widespread adoption and infringement of the patent ensues. Commanding 50% market share in unit sales of the patented product, the patent holder prevails in patent infringement suits obtaining court injunctions against all major rivals and maintaining a strict no-licensing policy. What happens next during the patent enforcement period would defy all conventional anti-patent narratives:

A Surreal Endeavor: Asserting Patent Rights in the U.S.

Asserting patent rights is a surreal endeavor these days. While the statistics on survival at the PTAB are improving, with the percentage of initiated proceedings declining and some patents seeing their claims affirmed, the cost and time necessary for a patentee to claw their way back to the district court—i.e., back to Square One—proves too much for many patentees. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) to fight at the PTAB simply to confirm issued patent claims is pushing many patentees out of the enforcement market. With such oppressive legal hurdles and costs, what good is a patent? For many, it cannot be enforced?