The groundswell of support for solving the problems created by patent assertion entities continues to grow. Today, I had the pleasure of attending a standing-room only gathering of organizations and companies hosted by the Coalition for Patent Fairness. We were there to discuss the path to legislation on solving the patent trollAn entity in the business of being infringed — by analogy to the mythological troll that exacted payments from the unwary. Cf. NPE, PAE, PME. See Reitzig and Henkel, Patent Trolls, the Sustainability of ‘Locking-in-to-Extort’ Strategies, and Implications for Innovating Firms. challenge, which we have documented many times. I would estimate that about 75 groups and companies were at the meeting.
While the usual suspects from the tech industry and public interest community were in attendance, they were not even half the group. Rather, the room was full of representatives from the financial services, retail, grocery, advertising and hotel industries, to name a few. There were even groups representing independent small businesses.
They are fed up with the constant attacks from the patent assertion entities that are draining the global economy. The gathering made me think of this famous scene from Network:
A consensus for Congress to pass legislation is growing. This is not just a ‘tech’ problem or just a ‘big business’ problem.
It is just a problem, and the time to fix it has come.