Welcome, new readers who are joining us after yesterday’s event and big announcement! Yesterday at an event co-sponsored by CCIA (which hosts this blog) and AAI (the American Antitrust Institute), FTCU.S. Federal Trade Commission. An independent regulatory agency charged with consumer protection and competition policy, which conducted several influential studies on how patents work in practice. Authored several key studies: 2003’s To Promote Innovation: The Proper Balance of Competition and Patent Law and Policy [PDF] and 2011’s The Evolving IP Marketplace: Aligning Patent Notice and Remedies with Competition [PDF]. Chairwoman Edith Ramirez announced her intent to have the FTCU.S. Federal Trade Commission. An independent regulatory agency charged with consumer protection and competition policy, which conducted several influential studies on how patents work in practice. Authored several key studies: 2003’s To Promote Innovation: The Proper Balance of Competition and Patent Law and Policy [PDF] and 2011’s The Evolving IP Marketplace: Aligning Patent Notice and Remedies with Competition [PDF]. do a 6(b) study on patent assertion entities, as the New York Times had predicted. (Two weeks in a row with Patent Progress coverage in the NYT, oh hey!) This event was Ramirez’s first public presentation as FTCU.S. Federal Trade Commission. An independent regulatory agency charged with consumer protection and competition policy, which conducted several influential studies on how patents work in practice. Authored several key studies: 2003’s To Promote Innovation: The Proper Balance of Competition and Patent Law and Policy [PDF] and 2011’s The Evolving IP Marketplace: Aligning Patent Notice and Remedies with Competition [PDF]. Chair, and her remarks were very promising for fixing the systemic problems of the patent system. As Mark Lemley noted, “the FTCU.S. Federal Trade Commission. An independent regulatory agency charged with consumer protection and competition policy, which conducted several influential studies on how patents work in practice. Authored several key studies: 2003’s To Promote Innovation: The Proper Balance of Competition and Patent Law and Policy [PDF] and 2011’s The Evolving IP Marketplace: Aligning Patent Notice and Remedies with Competition [PDF]. focused on privateering and functional claiming, not just trolls.” Ramirez’s conclusion and key takeaway was that “PAEs exploit underlying problems in the patent system to the detriment of innovation and consumers.” Check out the #PAEantitrust hashtag for more coverage and live-tweeting. A few other lines that were tweeted by several fellow live-tweeters were that PAEs are largely a symptom of underlying flaws in the patent system [@katmeresin, @eteichert, @sidhubaba], and that any benefits of PAEs are outweighed by their costs [@PatentProgress, @LPelican, @MarkBoTech].
Ramirez’s announcement was reported in a variety of sources, including Reuters, Bloomberg Business Week, AllThingsD, GigaOM, Adweek, The Hill, Ars Technica, and IT News. In addition to the keynote from FTCU.S. Federal Trade Commission. An independent regulatory agency charged with consumer protection and competition policy, which conducted several influential studies on how patents work in practice. Authored several key studies: 2003’s To Promote Innovation: The Proper Balance of Competition and Patent Law and Policy [PDF] and 2011’s The Evolving IP Marketplace: Aligning Patent Notice and Remedies with Competition [PDF]. Chairwoman Edith Ramirez, yesterday’s event also included a panel with Michael Carrier, Professor, Rutgers School of Law; Bert Foer, President, The American Antitrust Institute; Lisa Kimmel, Attorney Advisor, Office of Chairwoman Ramirez, Federal Trade Commission; Frances Marshall, Special Counsel for Intellectual Property, Legal Policy Section, Department of Justice, Antitrust Division; Paul Saraceni, Senior Vice President and Chief Intellectual Property Officer, RPX Corporation; and Ed Black, President and CEO, Computer & Communications Industry Association as moderator.
What else happened this week? Intellectual VenturesThe largest patent aggregator, currently holding around 40,000 patents. Closely associated with co-founder Nathan Myhrvold. IV is often viewed as a patent assertion entity, although much of its activities are conducted through spinoffs, and the company is at least nominally in the business of producing inventions in-house. See our posts on Intellectual Ventures. filed more lawsuits, as reported by the Essential Patent Blog. And just so you’re caught up on the other recent Patent Progress posts since last week’s roundup, Matt Levy took on ‘concern trolls’ expressing ‘concern’ about reforming covered business methods (CBM) review in a post that received the “Most effective use of music videos in a blog post about patent trolls” award from a commenter. And last Friday afternoon, Brian Kahin came out with a #longread on the White House’s recent proposals.
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