We have examined lots of litigation fights amongst big corporations as well as patent trolls. In the last lecture, we talked about patent trolls NTP tricked Motion Ltd. into paying them 625 million dollars by using completely bogus patents. The number of patent trolls have grew in years to extract money out of litigation. Larger corporations continue to fight patents for market share in the court. As a result, patent reform bill serves as a way to possibly lessen the negativities, encourages innovation instead of litigation.
PatentlyO posted White House Fact Sheet on Patent Reform to forward the updated facts about the patent reform act. There are few points worth mentioning:
- Making Patents Clear - The patent examiners need to be more careful about patent claims to ensure that it is consistent throughout the litigation process
- Crowdsourcing Prior Art - Make the new patent validation process informative and be conscious about prior art
- Transparency in Patent ownership - make the ownership of the patent transparent within litigation process, so that involved parties cannot hide behind shell companies
However, The Small Business Technology Council (SBTC) do not take the reform act as positive note. In an open letter to US Small Business Administration, SBTC think that legislation disincentives capital investments, which resulting in loss of money and jobs. SBTC stated that the disclosure of all plaintiff interested parties would give investors less incentive to invest in smaller companies because of the lack of anonymity. In short, SBTC is worried about the new patent reform favoring larger corporations by setting up more entry barriers. They also argue that the results of the previous patent related legislation are still undetermined, the Senate should not take more action before understanding the effectiveness of the legislation.
While with little knowledge about the current patent reform bill. It seems like the bill is favoring larger corporations as they've been annoyed by patent trolls and are seeking ways to eliminate the need to deal with such situation. Patent trolls are mostly small businesses with less people operating, similar to most of the smaller scale corporations. It is definitely worrying that those non-patent-trolls will be targeted as one in terms of involvement in innovation and patenting. Large companies definitely have more resources to lobby congress, especially when it comes to a crucial topic like patenting.
However, with the clearly stated focus on the bill, the Senate strives to make patenting clearer with technical professionals take part in the process. With less specific rules enforced on patenting, it is easier for patent trolls to take advantage of the borderline. Therefore, I believe the bill will definitely help improve the clarity on the patenting system.
I think the patent reform bill may not be as bad for small companies as it seems. There is a distinction between patent trolls and small businesses. Patent trolls are non-practicing entity and do not have any product or services, whereas small businesses should already have or is still developing a revenue-generating product or process. There would at least be a prototype to show for the small business which can differentiate themselves from patent trolls. With the new patent reform bill making it harder for patent trolls to file a case, any case filed against a large company may actually get more of their attention, and they may be more likely to reach a settlement compared to before where they certainly wouldn't give in to a small company without a fight, since they may think that it could be a patent troll.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to disagree with the Small Business Technology Council. I agree that this new system will make it harder for inventors with questionable inventions to receive patents, and that's a good thing for both large and small companies. Let's say the USPTO approves a poorly authored patent for a small Company A. Yes, Company A will have the patent to this technology, but the ambiguity and lack of clarity in this "poorly authored patent" means large corporations with massive legal budgets will then be able to sue this Company A and it will have difficulty mounting a defense considering the patent is "poorly authored". Now, if a very well-written patent is issued without any ambiguity, there is a lower likelihood other companies will want to sue Company A because it's very obvious what the company patented and what it did not. While these patent reforms could reduce the quantity of patents issued, it without a doubt will help raise the quality of those patents that are issued.
ReplyDeleteIt is nice to see the White House trying to succeed in enacting some sort of patent reform, in light of all the cases in the past few years. It remains to be seen whether this will actually help the players involved. I do think the changes were a little too vague in general, so I would like to see some specificity added in coming years.
ReplyDeleteThis new bill definitely needs to be observed at both angels. Not all companies negatively affected by the reform will be patent trolls, and those small businesses won't have the resources to properly avoid operating issues like the larger corporations. However, I also agree with you that the amount of transparency the bill is striving for, with increased outreach, training, and knowledge sharing, the process of adjusting to this bill may strengthen those small non-trolling businesses in the long term (very much like the phrase "no pain, no gain"),
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