AP: Congress moving
to rewrite laws to cut down on needless patents
Associated Press
Congress moving to rewrite laws to cut down on needless patents
July 28, 2007
By Erica Werner
Crustless peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, a way to move sideways
on a swing, a technique for exercising cats using a laser pointer
these are among the inventions patented in the United States over
the years.
Now Congress is trying to cut down on poor-quality or downright ridiculous patents,
and at the same time adapt the patent system to a high-tech era in which computers
and other electronic devices may contain thousands of patentable parts.
Rather than the patent system being the incentive for "so much of our innovation,
it has become a constraint on innovation," said Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif.,
author of a sweeping patent reform bill that passed the House Judiciary Committee
on July 18.
The Senate Judiciary Committee passed similar legislation the following day.
The full House could take up the issue before leaving for summer recess Friday,
though it's more likely to be considered in the fall.
Disputes between the high-tech industry, drug companies and other interest groups
have stalled patent reform attempts in the past, and legislation introduced during
the last session of Congress never made it out of committee.
Patents give holders ownership rights to their inventions for 20 years. That
can mean hundreds of millions of dollars to companies, research universities
and individual inventors.
Although not everyone believes the patent system needs to be changed, critics
cite various problems.
There's a backlog of 750,000 patent applications at the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office, which is recovering from years of underfunding and hopes to nearly double
the number of patent examiners on staff, currently about 5,300.
Patent applications have shot up in recent decades with the boom in the high-tech
industry, and they have gotten more complex. There's been a corresponding increase
in patent infringement lawsuits, which the tech industry blames on so-called "patent
trolls" who get patents for products they never plan to make, just so they
can sue for infringement if a company does turn out something similar.
That was the issue in a May Supreme Court ruling in favor of eBay Inc. in a lawsuit
by a small Virginia patent-holding company, MercExchange. The ruling established
that judges have flexibility in deciding whether to issue court orders barring
continued use of a technology after juries find a patent violation.
Tech companies still complain that under current law, damages in patent infringement
lawsuits can be wildly excessive because they can be based on the value of an
entire product, not just whatever small component of that product is in dispute.
Often cited is a $1.53 billion jury verdict earlier this year in favor of Alcatel-Lucent
SA in a dispute against Microsoft Corp. over two patents for MP3 encoding and
decoding tools.
"The current patent litigation system is unbalanced in a way that it forces
our companies to spend more time in the courtroom and less time innovating," said
Josh Ackil, vice president of government relations for the Information Technology
Industry Council.
The most controversial provision in the bills before Congress would make it easier
for courts to focus damage calculations more narrowly, probably resulting in
smaller damage awards. The measure is applauded by high-tech companies but strenuously
opposed by universities, small inventors and pharmaceutical and manufacturing
companies, which typically produce products with fewer patents and rely in part
on the prospect of heavy damages to protect their intellectual property.
"If this stuff passes as it is it will lower the value of patents by two
to three orders of magnitude," said Ronald J. Riley, president of the Professional
Inventors Alliance. He predicted small-time inventors would be forced out of
the field because it would no longer be worth their while to sue to protect their
inventions.
Because of the controversy, prospects for the legislation advancing are uncertain,
especially in the Senate, where opposition from just a few lawmakers can kill
a bill.
However, negotiations are ongoing, and there's wider support for other provisions
in the bills, which would represent the first major changes to patent law since
1999. These include:
Awarding a patent to the first person to file for it, rather than the first to
invent it. This would put the U.S. in line with international standards and eliminate
some time-consuming disputes between inventors.
Allowing third parties greater ability to challenge patents once they've been
issued. This is meant to produce stronger patents and allow patent challenges
to be dealt with by patent officials rather than in court, though some say the
Senate language in particular could allow patents to be endlessly contested.
In a change sought by the patent office, requiring inventors to provide more
information in their applications about how their inventions differ from existing
products or ideas.
ITI member companies include Accenture, Agilent Technologies, AMD, Apple, Applied Materials, Canon U.S.A., Cisco, ca, Corning, Dell, Eastman Kodak, eBay, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, IBM, Intel, Intuit, Lenovo, Lexmark, Micron, Microsoft, Monster, National Semiconductor, NCR, Oracle, Panasonic, SAP, Sony Electronics, Sun Microsystems, Symbol Technologies, Tektronix, Texas Instruments, Time Warner, Unisys, Verisign and Vonage.
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