Posts in Government

The TROL Act was introduced during the 113th Congress and as Subcommittee Chairman Congressman Michael Burgess (R-TX) explained it passed the subcommittee with bipartisan support. Still, Burgess explained during his brief opening statement that he believed “the text could be amended narrowly to achieve better protections for recipients of demand letters.” Despite the previous bipartisan support, Ranking Member Congressman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) said that he cannot support the TROL Act as it is written because “it includes problematic language that does not move us forward.”

This year the Innovation Act has been reintroduced, and after some thought that the bill would sail through the House of Representatives without even an additional hearing. The Senate has also held several hearings on patent reform, with a competing view of what patent reform should look like being submitted by Senator Chris Coons in the form of the STRONG Patents Act. The House is also considering more tailored legislation narrowly focusing on demand letters (i.e., the TROL Act), and just recently Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and David Vitter (R-LA), along with United States Representatives Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) submitted the Grace Period Restoration Act, which would reinstated the full 12 month grace period that was taken away from inventors as part of the America Invents Act (AIA).

Many of the provisions of H.R. 9 would unnecessarily undermine the enforceability of all U.S. patent rights, even when clearly valid patents are being enforced in good faith against clearly infringing actors. While a consensus on measures to target abusive behavior in patent litigation is achievable, the sweeping provisions of the Innovation Act cannot be supported.

A fair treatment of the issue of patent quality would have necessarily considered those applicants that were wrongfully denied, as well as the extraordinary wait one must endure on appeal to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to rectify examiner mistakes. Anything short of a fair and even-handed inquiry is not only inappropriate, but seems intended to lead to a conclusion that supports a preordained narrative. Sadly, this preordained narrative fits perfectly into the view of one side of the patent reform debate. With Congress considering patent reform in both the House and Senate the timing on the release of this one-sided report seems hardly coincidental.

People tend to focus on these nice, round numbers when looking at significant points in history. Here, however, we want to have a little fun with numbers and stick up for the little guy in this conversation, the “coulda been a contenders” or your near-misses, however you choose to view them. So today, we thought we’d take a look back at some of the mile markers that we’ve passed on the road of innovation and feature some technologies largely lost to the annals of time, simply because their issue number was off by one.

There were statements recognizing the need to keep open legitimate avenues to for innovators to protect themselves against infringement, and a strong desire to make sure that legislation focus on bad actions and actors. Not surprisingly, the Committee seems to largely think that the Innovation Act does strike the proper balance, although there was also recognition that changes could be made to make the bill better. USPTO Director Michelle Lee was wholeheartedly in support of fee shifting, justifying the position by saying that fault based fee-shifting will raise the costs for those who engage in abusive actions.

The data establishes that motions for attorney’s fees under section 285 after Octane were granted at a rate almost three times as high as in the year preceding Octane. In addition, the data establishes — contrary to the witness’s testimony — that 50% of motions for fees under section 285 filed by accused infringers were granted between January 1, 2015, and March 31, 2015. In contrast, in the 12 months preceding Octane, only 13% of such motions were granted.

To celebrate Earth Day we will profile green technologies and environmentally friendly innovations, like we always have. We will not, however, buy into the political rhetoric or hysterical claims pedaled by environmentalists as dogmatic fact. The truth is the predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists have never been accurate. Mainstream scientific publications are finally starting to recognize that for most of the last generation there is no evidence of global warming, the predictions made by environmentalists have been wrong and their factual claims to support their political agenda are false. For example, did you know that sea ice in Antarctic has been increasing, not decreasing?

Patent reform is back on the agenda when Congress returns from recess this week. On Tuesday, April 14, 2015, at 2:00 pm ET, the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on H.R. 9, more commonly referred to as the Innovation Act. Then on Thursday, April 16, 2015, at 11:00 am ET, the Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade (CMT) Subcommittee of the House Energy & Commerce Committee will also hold a patent related hearing. The subject of the CMT hearing will be the Targeting Rogue and Opaque Letters Act (TROL Act).

The United States Patent and Trademark Office current fee schedule went into effect on January 1, 2014, and was last revised on April 1, 2015… The lesson here is that fees can add up quickly. It is true, however, that once you file an application it will likely be many months (or perhaps years) before the Patent Office will get back to you so you can usually stagger these additional fees.

the study determined that 73.5% of the challenged claims did not survive review in IPR proceedings that reached a final decision on the merits. The report also shows that, in final decisions from the PTAB, 37.5% of the claims initially challenged were found unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 102 (anticipation), while 57.6% of the claims were found unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103 (obviousness). (Some claims were found unpatentable under both grounds.) In a recent study of patent decisions in district court cases, the district courts invalidated claims under Section 102 at a rate of 31.1% and under Section 103 at a rate of 27.8%.

Congress created AIA trial proceeding to combat trolls, not create an altogether new class of them. Since the initial filings of Hayman, the STRONG ACT has been introduced in the Senate and includes a provision that would require standing for IPR petitioners (presumably to thwart such filings). However, companies not only employ IPR as an alternative to ongoing litigation but as a due diligence tool to avoid such situations in the first instance. Innovators looking to develop a new product line, or new area of business should have the freedom to clear the landscape of improvidently granted patents via the PTAB without having to wait for a lawsuit, or threat of one. Such knee-jerk legislative fixes will have unintended, and unfortunate consequences.

The definition of indigenous innovation is “enhancing original innovation through co-innovation and re-innovation based on the assimilation of imported technologies.” Those familiar with China’s joint venture rules for foreign businesses, which require them to transfer some patent licensing powers to Chinese companies in order to enter their market, are wary of statements like this that essentially support a siphoning of foreign intellectual property.

Time and time again throughout the legislative history post grant proceedings were explained as being a faster, low-cost alternative to litigating validity disputes in Federal District Court. That being the case, it would seem extremely odd that any petitioner could bring a post grant challenge to a patent when that petitioner would not have standing to sue to invalidate the patent in Federal District Court. However, the statute does say that a person other than the patent owner can file a petition to institute an inter partes review.

Google’s self-driving car development has advanced so far beyond what our country’s laws are currently able to regulate that the technology has hit some legal stumbling blocks. As a result, Google has been focusing recently Google First Quarter 2015 Text Clusteron inventing pedestrian safety systems to be incorporated with its self-driving car, even receiving a patent for an airbag that would protect pedestrians in a collision. The company even has its focus on surgical robotics, recently announcing a partnership with Johnson & Johnson to develop surgical robots that would assist human surgeons.