Congress Tinkers with Further Patent Reforms
It seems Congress has chosen to ignore the significant impact the America Invents Act (AIA) has had on pure patent enforcement entities. There is simply no other rationale to explain why a new patent reform bill is contemplated by Congress near every week. While there will always be fringe organizations clamoring to simply outlaw patent suits altogether, or make them impossibly difficult, Congress needs to balance the interests of legitimate innovators with the fanatical anti-patent lobby (i.e., those bellyaching the most have yet to file a single, patent reexamination, IPR or CBM).
In order to properly balance the needs of technology companies and the targets of abusive litigation practices, Congress might want to take a look at the significant impact of the AIA has had on the dreaded “patent troll.” The Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB) proceedings of the AIA have not even been available for a full year. Given a bit more time, these post grant options will significantly degrade the non-practicing entity (NPE) contingency model.
To date, there have been over 400 post grant proceedings inititated with the Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB). A significant number of these procedings have been initated against non-practicing entities.
For more discussion on the current options and an update and forecast on pending legislative inititaives, check out Wednesday’s webinar on July 31st: Battling Patent Trolls: Leveraging New Executive Orders, AIA and Other Tools.