There hasn’t been much activity in Congress this week since the Innovation Act passed the House last week, but there will be a hearing next Tuesday December 17 in the Senate on “Protecting Small Businesses and Promoting Innovation by Limiting Patent TrollAn entity in the business of being infringed — by analogy to the mythological troll that exacted payments from the unwary. Cf. NPE, PAE, PME. See Reitzig and Henkel, Patent Trolls, the Sustainability of ‘Locking-in-to-Extort’ Strategies, and Implications for Innovating Firms. Abuse.”
In other news, last Friday, the Supreme Court granted cert in CLS Bank v. Alice. We’ve previously covered this case several times, such as Matt’s post on the Federal Circuit’s fractured opinion.
And we will be filing comments with the FTCU.S. Federal Trade Commission. An independent regulatory agency charged with consumer protection and competition policy, which conducted several influential studies on how patents work in practice. Authored several key studies: 2003’s To Promote Innovation: The Proper Balance of Competition and Patent Law and Policy [PDF] and 2011’s The Evolving IP Marketplace: Aligning Patent Notice and Remedies with Competition [PDF]. next Monday December 16 on its 6b study on patent assertion.
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