Slashdot Mirror
Finally, a Bill To End Patent Trolling
First time accepted submitter jellie writes "According to Ars Technica, a new bill introduced by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has received bipartisan support and has a real chance of passing. In a press call, lawyers from the CCIA, EFF, and Public Knowledge had universal praise for the bill, which is called the Innovation Act of 2013. The EFF has a short summary of the good and bad parts of an earlier draft of the bill. The bill will require patent holders who are filing a suit to identify the specific products and claims which are being infringed, require the loser in a suit to pay attorney's fees and costs, and force trolls to reveal anyone who has a 'financial interest' in the case, making them possibly liable for damages."
A NPE can still file suit. It's just they have to bring suit over a specific infringing product and be capable of identifying said product. Do you recall a slashdot story not too long ago about a patent troll that carpet bombed small businesses with letters asking if they used a printer with a scanning feature that would use a network to send a PDF file to be email out? That would not be a valid lawsuit under the law as the troll would not be able to identify a specific product in use by the businesses they are writing letters to.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
I'm not sure about the loser paying when the loser is the defendant. That means you can pay arbitrarily high fees to a lawyer to sue someone as long as you think you'll win.
German method: Plaintiff asks for money, defendant offers money (less or possibly zero). Court sets cost according the the value that is in argument (the difference). That's the fees that the lawyers get! Then if defendant is ordered to pay what he offered to pay anyway, he has won the case. If its more, the percentage he is ordered to pay is the percentage of the lawyers that he pays.
Example: You ask for $2.1 million. I offer $100,000. The court orders me to pay $120,000. We argued about two million. I was ordered to pay $20,000 = one percent beyond what I offered to pay anyway. I pay one percent of my lawyers and your lawyers, you pay 99%. And the lawyers get paid at the fixed "$2,000,000 rate" which is some small percentage of these two million.