Innovation Act - *USA*

Anyone in the US (or anywhere else for that matter) that can shed any light on the Innovation act that was passed by the house recently

How does this change things and what impact will it have on inventors / patents etc.

Any views?

Summary

Full bill

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/12/2013 08:55AM by richrap.

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[richrap.blogspot.com]

As far as I can tell, this only affects the way that patents are fought in court in order to discourage litigation from trolls. Perhaps the biggest deterrent in the bill is the ability of the defendant to recover legal fees from the plaintiff if the suit is lost. Also, when the end user of a product considered to be in violation of a patent is being sued, it permits the vendor of the technology to step in and aid in their defense. I don't know how often that would happen.. but it's a nice idea.

What it doesn't address is the already very poor patent process, where silly things that aren't true innovations can still be patented and turn out big bucks in lawsuits from companies with deep pockets.

Ars Technica watches these things pretty closely, and has nice write-ups.

This bill is GREAT for newer inventors/manufacturers.

It basically prevents (or helps prevent) patent trolling. Here's what a patent troll is:

Basically when a company goes out of business they will liquidate assets to try to stay afloat before they have to declare bankruptcy. If you look at a balance sheet for a company there will we an "intangible" assets account or something like that which means it's not physical or tangible but definitely worth money, like a copyright or patent or mascot or something. A large amount of these companies going bankrupt now are smaller technology companies...a surprisingly large amount. A lot of them are also older, and got patents for broader ideas that are now industry staples. Big companies will buy these patents for way more than they're actually worth but then use them to sue other companies for ridiculous settlements. They obviously wouldn't go after someone like Apple who has a crazy legal army, but moderate sized start-ups have been getting hammered in ways they shouldn't be.

Picture this: Some big company goes to a small old company that makes laminating machines. Super steady little company that's been trucking along for 80 years without anything extraordinary happening. They have a patent from 1930 buried way in their old records that is for something like "Using heat and pressure to apply a clear protective coating" or something bogus like that. The big company buys it and then holds it over the heads of every company that makes shatter resistant glass, lexan, computer screens...etc. etc. that could be even remotely applicable. Smaller companies don't have the money to follow through defending it, and will settle.

This isn't a realistic example though. Most now are things like this that happen on a scale of a year or two, because of how quickly technology is developing. Some "innovation" today could be standard practice in a few months.