Congress continues to focus on 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. problem. Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Judy Chu (D-CA) have just introduced the Stopping the Offensive Use of Patents Act (STOP Act) to expand the Covered Business Method review program at the PTOPatent and Trademark Office, informally used interchangeably with USPTO.. This bipartisan bill is very similar to the Patent Quality Improvement Act that Senator Schumer (D-NY) introduced in the Senate.
I’ve written about the Covered Business Method review program several times. This review program lets anyone who has been threatened with or sued for infringing a financial services patent ask the PTOPatent and Trademark Office, informally used interchangeably with USPTO. to take another look. The Patent Trial and Appeals Board issued the first decision on a Covered Business Method patent a few weeks ago and invalidated a troll’s patent in just 9 months.
The STOP Act would expand the program to cover all business method patents. These are not patents that invent some new technology — they’re patents that use existing technology to do something. Business method patents are the weapon of choice of patent trolls, and there are a lot of bad ones out there.
I have no doubt that we’ll hear the concern trolls worry about the supposed devastating effect this expansion would have on various industries. They usually tell us the consequences will be something like the effect of “crossing the streams” in Ghostbusters:
[youtube_embed id=’jyaLZHiJJnE’]
Bunk!
If your patents are valid you have nothing to worry about. If you don’t threaten people with your patents you have nothing to worry about. And if your valid patent gets challenged with Covered Business Method review and survives, you’ve just saved yourself a lot of money, because you won’t have to deal with the same arguments in court.
Anyone opposing this bill or Senator Schumer’s bill is essentially supporting bad patents. Opposing these bills is equivalent to saying that the PTOPatent and Trademark Office, informally used interchangeably with USPTO. shouldn’t be given the chance to correct its mistakes; that if you can sneak one past a patent examiner, good for you; and if you’re the target of one of these bad patents, it’s just tough luck, because you’re going to have to hope you can persuade a non-expert judge or jury (assuming you can afford to fight all the way to trial).
The opposition is simply wrong here. Expanding Covered Business Method review is absolutely crucial to dealing with the bad software patents out there. If we’re going to trust the PTOPatent and Trademark Office, informally used interchangeably with USPTO. to issue patents in the first place, we should trust the PTOPatent and Trademark Office, informally used interchangeably with USPTO. to weed out the bad software patents that have gotten through the system.
Bottom Line
The PTOPatent and Trademark Office, informally used interchangeably with USPTO. should be allowed to fix its mistakes and help get rid of the bad software patents that trolls use. End of story.
Here’s major thanks to Reps. Issa and Chu for co-sponsoring this bill in the House, and a renewed thanks to Sen. Schumer for putting this out there in the first place.
You can tweet your support with this button:
[tweetbutton hashtag=’ExpandCBM’]Thank you @ChuckSchumer, @DarrellIssa, @RepJudyChu for helping fight patent trolls![/tweetbutton]
