In the accelerating debate over patent litigation reform legislation, opponents continue to mischaracterize it as “patent reform,” as if the bill would somehow reorder the system by which patents are granted, the duration of protection and so on.<\/p>\n
Whether deliberate or simply careless, that’s simply untrue.<\/p>\n
Patent litigation reform legislation, including the Innovation Act<\/a> that we at CFIF most strongly favor, would reform how patents are litigated<\/em>, not our patent system itself.\u00a0 And as Dana Rao, Vice President and Associate General Counsel of Intellectual Property and Litigation at Adobe Systems, details<\/a> in The Hill<\/em>, patent litigation abuse remains a serious problem:<\/p>\n The numbers are in.\u00a0 And they aren’t good.\u00a0 Patent trolls filed 3,604 suits in 2015, making it the second busiest year on record for abusive patent litigation.\u00a0 And if anyone had any doubt about the merit of those suits, the busiest filing day last year, by far, came one day before a court rule permitting vague complaints was set to expire.\u00a0 A record 212 patent infringement lawsuits were filed on November 30.\u00a0 That is nearly 18 times as many as a normal day.\u00a0 What kind of patent holder would scramble to file a suit to take advantage of this rule?\u00a0 A patent holder who knew their suit had no merit. \u00a0These recent numbers reveal that court decisions and rule changes do not discourage abuse of our patent system.\u00a0 In the current system, trolls continue to bring frivolous suits in sympathetic courtrooms around the country.\u00a0 Only legislation will change these dynamics.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Innovation Act addresses that critical need for reform.<\/p>\n The Innovation Act targets patent litigation abuse by:\u00a0 (1)\u00a0 Forcing frivolous litigants who can’t demonstrate to the court that their “position and conduct … were reasonably justified in law and fact, or that special circumstances (such as severe economic hardship to a named inventor) make an award unjust”;\u00a0 (2)\u00a0 Changing pleading standards so that parties must state their allegations with greater clarity and specificity, instead of relying upon vague and summary allegations that offer little insight into the nature of their claims;\u00a0 (3)\u00a0 Reforming the pretrial discovery process (witness depositions, document requests, etc.) in order to reduce the oppressive burdens currently imposed on parties, often as a tactic to drive innocent parties to settle rather than vindicate their rights;\u00a0 and (4)\u00a0 Bringing greater transparency regarding true ownership of disputed patents.<\/p>\n Notice what the Innovation Act does not do:\u00a0 overhaul the patent system itself.\u00a0 Which is one reason why the bill passed by an overwhelming and bipartisan 325-91 vote in the last Congress.<\/p>\n So why do opponents continue to mischaracterize it as “patent reform?”\u00a0 Only they possess the certainty of their own minds to explain, but one suspects that it’s a ploy to frighten those of us who support strong intellectual property (IP) protections.\u00a0 But CFIF takes a backseat to no one in advocating strong IP protections<\/a>, and we would not support any bill that threatened to undermine them.<\/p>\n Whatever their motivations or confusion, however, it’s important that elected officials, policy analysts and everyday Americans remain clear that patent litigation reform should not be confused with “patent reform.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the accelerating debate over patent litigation reform legislation, opponents continue to mischaracterize it as “patent reform,” as if the bill would somehow reorder the system by which patents are granted, the duration of protection and so on. Whether deliberate or simply careless, that’s simply untrue. Patent litigation reform legislation, including the Innovation Act that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4814,1442,4813],"class_list":["post-23624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-innovation-act","tag-patent","tag-patent-litigation-reform"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23624"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23626,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23624\/revisions\/23626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}