Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) of the Senate Judiciary Committee have a new op-ed in Politico about the abuses of our patent system, and their intent to fix it. They explain that the U.S. patent system is no longer fulfilling its constitutional duty of promoting progress, and is instead harming our economy. They don’t use the term “patent trolls” or even “patent assertion entities,” rather calling them “patent abusers” who file “predatory lawsuits,” and “bad actors.”
Congress is working on a bipartisan, bicameral level, as it did in the 2011 Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, and their “legislation will increase the transparency of patent ownership, protect the customer of a patented product when the manufacturer should really be the defendant and improve the process for reviewing patents at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.”
We are pleased to see Congress publicly calling for reforms, and look forward to reading the latest drafts from the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Judiciary Committee.
