Last week House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and a bipartisan coalition introduced the Innovation Act of 2013, intended to fix a number of problems with patent trolls or Patent Assertion Entities (PAE), such as: * Heightened pleading requirements when a lawsuit is filed, including detailed specificity on patent claims at issue how they correspond to accused products or processes; * Adopting the English rule of the loser in a patent lawsuit bearing the winners fees and costs unless the losers position was substantially justified; * Requiring a patent holder bringing suit to reveal the ultimate parent entity or other real party in interest (RPI) and, where the plaintiff is a shell company, allowing the defendant to join the RPI in the litigation; * Staying lawsuits against customers of accused products (such as an off-the-shelf WiFi router used in an Internet cafe) when the manufacturer has been sued; * Staying discovery until the Markman hearing has been held to construe the patent; and * Expanding Post Grant Review (PGR: oppositions and invalidation trials), PGR itself a recent development under the America Invents Act of 2011. judiciary.house.gov/news/2013/10232013_2.html
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 03:05:55 +0000