Innovation is the lifeblood of a prosperous economy. Sound patent policy, which encourages the nexus between risk and ideas (especially for small entrepreneurs), makes invention profitable. The U.S. patent system enables that dream by protecting the market an invention creates long enough for the inventor to gain a toehold against competition, and by creating a property right capable of attracting critical investment to bring the invention to market and grow the business. Don’t let H.R. 9 or S.1137 kill this can do American spirit of innovation.
Leading organizations of the Conservative Movement have stepped up their game informing Congress on the philosophical reasons for opposing the Innovation Act and its Senate companion, the PATENT Act. This increased patent bill opposition is directed at Republican lawmakers, the political majority party in both houses of Congress. With House leadership deciding to postpone H.R. 9’s floor debate until at least September, the expanded conservative opposition seems to be effective.
As patent reform keeps chugging along in Washington, an important briefing was held on Thursday, July 23rd, between members and staff of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director Michelle Lee. The meeting focused on H.R. 9, the Innovation Act, which recently moved out of committee and is heading to the floor of the House for a vote once it’s scheduled, although a vote is not expected until September at the earliest. The briefing was closed to the press.
Most Congressional offices now understand how loser-pay, bonding and joinder stops the flow of capital to innovation startups, how customer stays make defending patent rights impossibly difficult, why eliminating PRG estoppel perpetuates litigation shifting almost all of the costs onto inventors, and how IPR’s and CBM’s unjustly strip property rights and devalue all patents. Rank and file offices seem to be listening. However, key offices are deliberately deaf.
Patent prosecution describes the interaction between applicants and their representatives, and a patent office with regard to a patent, or an application for a patent. (source: Wikipedia). It is a well-known term of art commonly used in the IP community. On the other hand, patent persecution describes the activities among various actors currently dismantling the US patent system, block by block. It is a recent phenomenon and seems to know no boundaries. (source: read the news!).