The U.S. Senate is moving forward with two bills that would enrich patent trolls, patent system insiders, and a few large companies that rely on flimsy patents, at the expense of everyone else.
One bill, the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act would bring back some of the worst software patents we've seen, and even re-introduce types of patents on human genes that were banned years ago.
Patent trolls are companies that don't focus on making products or selling services.
They're not a niche problem; patent trolls filed the majority of patent lawsuits last year and for all the years in which we have good data.
These do-nothing companies continue to be vigorous users of the patent system, and they'll be the big winners under the two bills the U.S. Senate is considering pushing forward.
The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act, or PERA, would overturn key legal precedents that we all rely on to kick the worst-of-the-worst patents out of the system.
It hasn't stopped patent trolling, because there are so many patent owners willing to ask for nuisance-value settlements that are far below the cost of legal defense.
A patent on ordering restaurant food through a mobile phone, which was used to sue more than 100 restaurants, hotels, and fast-food chains before it was finally thrown out under the Alice rules, could survive if PERA becomes law.
Imagine if the first lab to sequence the COVID-19 genome filed for patent protection, and went on to threaten other labs that seek to create tests with patent infringement.
The PREVAIL Act would bar most people from petitioning the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to revoke patents that never should have been granted in the first place.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issues hundreds of thousands of patents every year, with less than 20 hours, on average, being devoted to examining each patent.
That's why Congress created a process for the public to ask the USPTO to double-check certain patents, to make sure they were not wrongly granted.
The PREVAIL Act will limit access to the IPR process to only people and companies that have been directly threatened or sued over a patent.
EFF used the IPR process back in 2013, when thousands of our supporters chipped in to raise more than $80,000 to fight against a patent that claimed to cover all podcasts.
Dozens of lawsuits are filed each year against open source projects, the majority of them brought by patent trolls.
IPR is already too expensive and limited; Congress should be eliminating barriers to challenging bad patents, not raising more.
The Senators pushing this agenda have chosen willful ignorance of the patent troll problem.
The facts remain clear: the majority of patent lawsuits are brought by patent trolls.
The Alice rules and IPR system, along with other important reforms, have weakened the power of these patent trolls.
Two former Federal Circuit judges, two former Directors of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and many other well-placed patent insiders are all telling Congress that Alice should be overturned and patent trolls should be allowed to run amok.
This Cyber News was published on www.eff.org. Publication date: Tue, 12 Mar 2024 22:43:06 +0000