Raymond P. Niro

The attack on individual inventors using names like NPEs and patent trolls is nearly identical to the attacks previously waged by corporate America on personal injury lawyers, using the McDonald’s hot coffee case as an example of lawyer abuse (now it’s the Wi-Fi patent cases). Like the corporate attacks on everything from the private enforcement of securities fraud claims to unfair business practice, civil rights and age discrimination claims, the new target is patent infringement claims brought by “boogie man” entities that don’t manufacture products.

Ray Niro writes in defense of independent inventors: Can anyone cite what section of the Constitution or the patent law reserves the right to obtain and enforce patents exclusively for large manufacturing companies? And how can an individual or small company compete against a large company that decides to copy without concern for the cost or risk of litigation? My plea to those in power is simply this: listen to both sides before you act, please. Stop categorizing all NPEs as bad. Go after abuse where it actually exists. And, please: protect American inventors and invention, not those who copy innovation.