How to Fight Patent Trolls

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the Innovation Act, a bill that will purportedly fight patent trolls.  Patent trolls are companies that own patents, but do nothing with them, other than attempt to collect licensing fees from other companies which infringe their patents.  For instance, a company might buy a smaller company that has many patents to sue other infringing companies for money.  Their intent is not to use the patents to provide a service or manufacture products, but to simply "troll" the other companies for money.  The Innovation Act attempts to help rectify some of the problems faced when fighting patent trolls.  An article written by the EEF explains it quite well and breaks down the specific ways the act is fighting patent trolls.

Patent trolls often sue without intending to win, but rather have the defendant settle.  Currently, a patent suit can be brought about without any specification of the patent being infringed upon or the technologies that use them.  This leaves the defendant guessing about the case and they often decide to settle instead.  The Innovation Act will require that reasonable information concerning the infringement will be given in the suit.  The legal cost of fighting one of these lawsuits is extremely high, so smaller companies who cannot afford the cost of the suit will settle, even if they will probably win.  The act will rectify this by shifting the cost of the suit to the loser.  There is also the cost of getting the information required by the plaintiff for the case.  The cost for the defendant can be extremely high, while it is very low for the troll.  The act will push back this discovery until after the court has initially reviewed the case and also limit the demanded documents to only the most relevant, pushing the cost of any additional discovery to the plaintiff.  Patent trolls like to transfer their patents to shell companies, they own, to make their claims.  The lack of information regarding the ownership of patents can give the trolls an advantage.  The act will provide transparency by forcing the plaintiffs to release information regarding the ownership of the patents and also force the involvement of companies which have a "direct financial interest" in the case.  Trolls won't be able to hide behind their shell companies so easily anymore.  Patent trolls also target companies which simply use the services or products which they did not develop, but do infringe.  The act will pause the case against that company until the company which manufactured or supplied the infringing product or service settles the case with the troll.

I was surprised to see how malicious companies are with their patents and relieved that there is finally something being done.  The Innovation Act has yet to be passed in the Senate, so the changes are not set in stone, but we can only hope that it will provide some level of protection against patent trolls.  Large companies are using their vast resources to basically extort money from smaller companies due to high litigation fees and weak laws.  These are not competitors fighting for business, but rather predators bleeding small business using technologies they have no intention of using.  Patent trolls need to be fought because they slow the progress of technology to line their own pockets.

https://www.eff.org/cases/six-good-things-about-innovation-act