The USPTO, the agency charged with determining whether something falls within the scope of patents, is allowing for Patent Trolls to be searchable. As part of the Obama Administrations to crack down on patent trolls, an online toolkit was made available to help entrepreneurs deal with patent trolls. In an example from the article, a mass-sent demand letter claimed a licensing agreement that required hours of time and cost to disprove. Although the sum requested was a trivial amount, $50,000, the hassle that entrepreneur's have to go through to dispel these false allegations is not worth it. The major goal of some of these entrepreneurs is making access to information about who is filing these alleged infringements easier to find. This toolkit has the potential to correct information asymmetry in the patent landscape by providing more information as to who are the one's infringing.
The online firm Lex Machina uses legal based analytics to do comprehensive search to display critical information about patent trolls, their litigation history, and data on federal patent cases. Although it hasn't had a major impact yet on costs, this search capability allows companies to size up who they are dealing with. In addition, it exposes these individuals to the public eye thereby exposing them as to who they are. However, this solution only solves part of the problem as garbage patents are still out there that prevent entrepreneurs from being ultimately ridden of high costs. The article urges the USPTO to take a stand against these garbage patents to make life easier on entrepreneurs.
The US Patent System is responsible for determining how patents are evaluated. The USPTO provides judgement through the interpretation of patentability; however, judgement of patentability is done by various different parties, including judges, juries, and patent examiners. The wide variety of any individual who may levy judgement on a patent case leads to very different results because of individual biases and expertise. In terms of judges, they have the legal knowledge to weigh a case against previous jurisprudence. Judges generally hear multiple sides of a case and rule with the knowledge that they have about the law. Juries, on the other hand, are quite different in the sense that they hear arguments, but must come to a unanimous conclusion based on the appeal of the prosecutor and the defendant. The last type of individual to weigh in on case are patent examiners, who generally have technical expertise and can evaluate patents based on common technology and similarities between patent technology.
Once a decision on patents has been levied, it is the prerogative of the USPTO to translate the court decisions into administrable tasks for the examiner corps. In this article, it states that the difficult decision for the examiner corps is determining the guidelines on products of nature, laws of nature, and natural phenomena. Essentially the article makes the distinction that has come about because there has been scrutiny over claims and whether they properly or improperly encompass the products of nature, laws of nature, and natural phenomena. According to the USPTO, if a claim "reflects a significant difference from what exists in nature" then it is eligible to be a patent. Conversely, if a claim "is effectively drawn to something that is naturally occurring", it isn't patent eligible. To me the difference seems quite muddled and therefore very subjective, thus leading to interpretations that could vary given ones knowledge, technical expertise, or knowledge of laws.
International companies are concerned about Europe's casual attitude toward patent trolls. Companies such as Samsung and Apple see Europe has a paradise for patent trolls. Both of these companies complain that these patent trolls cause serious problems that continue to plague innovators. An open letter has been sent to European policy makers signed by very notable international companies claiming that the patent trolling in Europe has been escalating. These companies furthermore say that there must be a unified patent system so that standards will be similar across different nations.
It is an interesting debate about how to resolve patent issues across specific nations. Many nations don't have an as expansive patent troll litigation culture which makes them more favorable in patent related trial cases. There are concerns that there would be easier grounds on which to litigate on and this would create more litigation.
In this remarkably pragmatic article, the author is urging that the Senate pass legislation to prevent patent trolling. He cites the main reason for doing so as an impediment to innovation. Last year, the House was able to pass legislation that would require patent trolls to offer more details about the significance of their lawsuits as well as fee -shifting measures, which allow for recuperation of fees should a party win a frivolous lawsuit. Provisions like these would definitely reduce the power of patent trolls, who thrive on low-quality, expansive patents to strong-arm companies into complying with their settlements.
The Obama Administration has put patent trolling legislation as one of its top priorities in order to encourage innovation and reduce the impact that patent trolls have in our economy. A glaring statistic from the article that stood out to me was that $29 billion dollars in legal fees were spent on defending companies against patent trolls. Patent trolling has also been targeting smaller and mid-sized companies, many of which don't have the resources necessary to fight these trolls. Many of these companies decide to settle rather than declare bankruptcy as means to protect themselves and their business. However, this is the sort of action that should be stopped if a bill is signed into law. As the article stated, many of the patents that are being used include online shopping carts on e-commerce websites, WiFi technology in establishments, and shipment tracking technology. The Innovation Act, as the bill is being called, is coming at a much needed time. There is bipartisanship against patent trolling and we need to reduce the power as a society against these leeches who simply litigate and prevent companies from reaching their full potential
From: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-j-black/senate-needs-to-stop-patent-trolls_b_4696466.html
In November of 2013, a Kentucky Senate voted that "to establish a bad-faith assertion of patent infringement as a violation of Kentucky's consumer protection chapter and authorize the utilization of the remedies available for those violations in addition to private remedies established in the bill." Let me back up a bit to give you some context. A subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance showed that patent trolls used deceptive demand letters. There are many factors that go into deciding whether or not something actually constitutes bad-faith when discussing patent trolling. The laundry list is spelled out and gives a structure as to whether someone can claim patent trolling was in bad-faith. However, patent law is a federal issue, not a state one. Hopefully, there is legislation at the Federal level that mirrors the concerns of the Kentucky state legislature so that demand letters in bad faith will no longer be tolerated.
From: http://www.fosspatents.com/2014/02/kentucky-senate-committee-approves.html
