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Has the Supreme Court Made Patent Reform Legislation Unnecessary?

Posted by Soulskill on from the reply-hazy-try-again dept.

An anonymous reader writes: As Congress gears up again to seriously consider patent litigation abuse—starting with the introduction of H.R. 9 (the "Innovation Act") last month—opponents of reform are arguing that recent Supreme Court cases have addressed concerns. Give the decisions time to work their way through the system, they assert. A recent hearing on the subject before a U.S. House Judiciary Committee (HJC) Subcommittee shined some light on the matter. And, as HJC Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a long-time leader in Internet and intellectual property issues, put it succinctly in his opening remarks: "We've heard this before, and though I believe that the Court has taken several positive steps in the right direction, their decisions can't take the place of a clear, updated and modernized statute. In fact, many of the provisions in the Innovation Act do not necessarily lend themselves to being solved by case law, but by actual law—Congressional legislation."

2 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Here is the text by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here is the text of the law in question. Parts that interest me (ianalbirp):

    1) Formalization of 'Covenant Not to Sue.'
    2) Makes it harder to sue the customer when the manufacturer commits a patent violation.
    3) Commissions various interesting studies on the effectiveness (or on the negative effects) of patents.

    There might be more but I only have so much tolerance for reading legalese......

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    1. Re:Here is the text by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      None of those are the objectional points of the "reform" bill.

      The main complaint about the patent reform bill is that it institutes a "loser pays" system that will make it impossible for small inventors to bring suit against large corporations. The AIA (the last reform bill) already substantially increased the cost that individual inventors had to pay to be able to sue large corporations. Because of the new IPR and CBM petitions, a patent holder needs to have several hundred thousand dollars in cash on hand to be able to pay attorneys to bring suit against a large corporation. This assumes that his litigation attorneys are working on contingency basis, and that he will use that cash to pay his patent lawyers to defend the patent in the inevitable IPR or CBM proceeding (which is almost never covered under a contingency contract).

      If the Goodette bill is passed, the inventor will also have to risk that he will have to pay the cost of the corporation's lawyers when he brings suit. This will require him to pony up several hundred for the CBM, and then be ready to pay several million dollars for the corporation's attorney fees if he looses. Of course, if the inventor must sue multiple defendants, then he exponentially increases his risk, as a loss on validity in any one suit will render the patent invalid across all of the suits (and open up loser pays to multiple defendants).

      If you think that patents are important, you need to ask yourself how much it should cost for a patent holder to be able to enforce his patents. If you think that an inventor needs at least 2-3 million dollars to do it (even if he can get contingency lawyers), then the current reform is for you.