Although John Squires is busy destroying the PTAB—as of last week, he has now gone 0 for 34 on allowing institution of IPRIntellectual Property Rights. Usually associated with formal legal rights such as patent, trademark, and copyright. Intellectual property is a broader term that encompasses knowledge, information, and data considered proprietary whether or not it is formally protected. petitions he reviews—the story in Congress is more positive. Tomorrow, the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to mark up a number of bills. Most importantly, that list includes H.R. 2675, the Protecting Our Courts from Foreign Manipulation Act of 2025, and H.R. 1109, the Litigation Transparency Act of 2025.
Both of these bills aim to increase transparency into third-party litigation funding, a topic we’ve frequently discussed here on Patent Progress. The Litigation Transparency Act is quite simple—if there’s someone who stands to benefit from your litigation that isn’t a party, you have to tell the court and other litigants who it is and what the terms of the agreement between the parties are. This applies to all parties, not just patent owners, and to all forms of litigation, not just patent litigation. And fundamentally, it ensures that courts and parties can behave ethically—avoiding conflicts of interest and representing clients against clients. And it helps, though incompletely, make sure that litigation is driven to vindicate the interests of the plaintiff, not to provide windfall profits to private equity funders. Finally, it gives courts a window into whether the plaintiff is really the party in control – given the kinds of behavior some funders have engaged in with unsophisticated parties, this is likely quite necessary.
The Protecting Our Courts Act is more complex, but also narrower—it only impacts agreements with foreign entities. It requires disclosureOne of the primary objectives of the patent system. In return for the government-granted right to exclude that is embodied in the patent, the inventor must disclose to the public through his patent the invention for which protection is sought. Inventors unwilling to disclose their invention to the public may instead opt for trade secret protection. of any agreements that create a right to financial benefit to any foreign person and specifically renders void any contract that obtains litigation funding from a foreign government or sovereign wealth fund. Both bills contain exceptions and definitions that ensure that impact and cause litigation, as well as ordinary contingency fee litigation, would not be impacted.
Litigation funding is already a huge problem, one that continues to grow. We hope that the House Judiciary Committee will report these bills out favorably—while neither would eliminate litigation funding in its entirety, both would help shine sunlight on the problem and limit some of the worst abuses.
