Congress to Consider Patent Litigation Reforms This Week

Two events on Capitol Hill this week will focus on potential patent litigation reforms. Both will be available by live webcast.

Congressional Briefing on “Patent Trolls and Their Impact on the Economy”
Tuesday, March 5, 2013, 11:10 am – 12:10 pm ET
Sponsored by: The Internet Association
Webcast: http://ustream.tv/channel/internetassociation
Moderator: Ryan Grim, The Huffington Post
Speakers:
• House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)
• Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
• Kevin Kramer, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of IP, Yahoo!
• Blake Lawit, Senior Director of Litigation, LinkedIn

House Hearing on “Abusive Patent Litigation: The Impact on American Innovation & Jobs, and Potential Solutions”
Thursday, March 7, 2013, 9 am ET
Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet
House Judiciary Committee
Webcast: http://judiciary.house.gov
Witnesses: To be announced.

The hearing is expected to focus on potential legislative reforms to enhance and strengthen the American Invents Act and to address issues related to recent patent litigation trends.

One topic will be the recently introduced “Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes Act of 2013” (SHIELD Act) (H.R. 845), sponsored by Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Peter DeFazio (D-OR). Rep. Chaffetz serves on the Subcommittee. H.R. 845 is a revision of the proposed SHIELD Act of 2012 that died in Committee last session. The proposed SHIELD Act of 2013 contains two major changes. It would extend the “loser pays” regime to all types of patents, not just computer and software-related patents. It also changes the threshold for when the loser must pay the winner’s litigation costs from the “party alleging the infringement of the patent did not have a reasonable likelihood of succeeding” to a categorical approach targeting patent trolls. The loser-pays regime would not apply if the losing party would be able to meet at least one of three conditions: (1) original inventor, (2) an entity making a “substantial investment” in the patent through production or sale, and (3) university or technology transfer organization. Because patent trolls are businesses that mainly purchase patents and then license those patents, they likely would not be able to qualify under these three categories and thus would be subject to the loser-pays regime.

Full-text of the SHIELD Act of 2013, H.R. 845, is available at: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d113:h.r.00845:

Full-text of the SHIELD Act of 2012, H.R. 6245, is available at: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:h.r.06245:

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