Members of Congress warn against throwing patent system out of balance

 

[July 18, 2015]  By Rachel Martin | Watchdog.org
 
 PITTSBURGH — Trade groups and manufacturers are already voluntarily phasing out the production and use of microbeads, tiny plastic bits that add grit to products like facial cleaners and colorful decoration to toothpastes.

By Josh Peterson / July 16, 2015 /

The House of Representatives is expected to vote on the Innovation Act as early as next week to address the problem of so-called patent trolls filing lawsuits against startups; the Senate is expected to vote on its own bill, the PATENT Act, this month or right after the August recess.

During a press conference held On Tuesday, however, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), an MIT-educated inventor who was also the target of a patent troll, drew attention to a major problem he sees with the bill.

“The problem with this bill, the overarching problem, is it never defines a patent troll,” said Massie. “Everything that it does to a patent troll, it does to a legitimate inventor.”

The bill, he said, makes it harder for both so-called “trolls” and legitimate inventors to raise investment and obtain injunctions against patent infringers.

Additional members present at the press conference included Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Bill Foster (D-Ill.), and Sens. David Vitter (R-La.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), and they emphasized their opposition had broad bipartisan support in both chambers. Vitter and Coons are cosponsors of a competing bill, the STRONG Patents Act of 2015.

Conservative groups such as the American Conservative Union, Club for Growth, and Eagle Forum continued their opposition against the Innovation Act on Monday when they launched an ad campaign saying the bill will enable Chinese economic theft.

“This legislation undermines the Constitutional rights of American inventors and is destructive to future innovation,” said Phyllis Schlafly, founder and president of Eagle Forum.

“China’s weak patent system has led to rampant abuse and stealing of many American inventions,” she said. “The GOP is pushing legislation that weakens our patent system and emulates China’s.”

In an op-ed last week, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) likened the bill to the medical device tax the House recently voted to repeal.

“Congressional consistency, never easy to come by, would assure that punitive taxes imposed on our innovators ransacks our economy just as badly as gutting their intellectual property rights. We need neither assault from our own government,” said Rohrabacher.

The Innovation Act’s advocates, however, unmoved by the threat of Chinese intellectual property theft upon the nation’s economy, positively view the bill’s broad brush strokes as a possible model to reform the judicial system.

Citing the conservative Heritage Foundation, for example, the DC-based R Street Institute recently blogged that patent reform was “not just about the patent system.”

“Patent-reform offers a case study for broader limitations on predatory trial lawyers,” wrote R Street’s innovation policy director Mike Godwin and senior fellow Zach Graves.

Others, such as the National Restaurant Association, see the proposals in the Innovation Act as “targeted reforms.” The restaurant industry trade group activated its membership on Tuesday to send a letter to members of Congress expressing strong support for the bill.

“Many of the technologies that have come under fire are ones that provide value-added services to our customers, such as in-store Internet WiFi access, online nutrition calculators, and restaurant locators on websites and in store-branded smartphone applications,” said Dan Roehl, vice president of government relations for the National Restaurant Association.