Exciting news! Yesterday, the House passed the Innovation Act by a 325-91 vote, with lots of bipartisan support. As Matt Levy told The Hill’s Hillicon Valley, the legislation “is not perfect, but it has a lot of the key features to deal with 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.” I live-tweeted the debate of the bill and the amendments on @PatentProgress. If you scan our feed, or the #InnovationAct hashtag, you’ll get a good idea of the concerns raised by members, and also the vote breakdowns for the eight amendments considered. This is another huge step for patent reform, but there is still more to come. It was also announced that there will be a hearing on December 17 in the Senate on “Protecting Small Businesses and Promoting Innovation by Limiting 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. Abuse.” We look forward to continued progress on this.
Earlier this week Matt Levy also had a post sharing Chairman Goodlatte’s excellent video about the Innovation Act. And we put together a list of the hundreds of diverse supporters who have sent letters and publicly come out in favor of the Innovation Act.
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