By Kevin Madigan & Sean O’Connor
This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee was to mark up a bill limiting patent eligibility for combination drug patents—new forms, uses, and administrations of FDA approved medicines. While the impetus was to curb so-called “evergreening” of drug patents, the effect would have been to stifle life-saving therapeutic innovations. Read more
Today, 28 law professors, economists, and political scientists from across the nation submitted a letter to Congress expressing serious concerns about the recent push for sweeping changes to patent litigation venue rules, such as those proposed in the VENUE Act. The letter is copied below, and it can be downloaded here: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2816062 Read more
By Adam Mossoff and Kevin Madigan
Following the Supreme Court’s four decisions on patent eligibility for inventions under § 101 of the Patent Act, there has been much disruption and uncertainty in the patent system. The patent bar and most stakeholders in the innovation industries have found the Supreme Court’s decisions in Alice Corp. Read more
It is common today to hear that it’s simply impossible to search a field of technology to determine whether patents are valid or if there’s even freedom to operate at all. We hear this complaint about the lack of transparency in finding “prior art” in both the patent application process and about existing patents. Read more
The FTC’s long-awaited case study of patent assertion entities (PAEs) is expected to be released this spring. Using its subpoena power under Section 6(b) to gather information from a handful of firms, the study promises us a glimpse at their inner workings. Read more
Advocates for changing the patent venue rules, which dictate where patent owners can sue alleged infringers, have been arguing that their remedy will cure the supposed disease of abusive “trolls” filing suit after suit in the Eastern District of Texas. This is certainly true, but it’s only true in the sense that cyanide cures the common cold. Read more
Here’s a brief excerpt of an op-ed by Adam Mossoff & Devlin Hartline that was published in The Hill:
Two recent op-eds published in The Hill argue that broad patent legislation—misleadingly labeled “reform”—is needed because the U.S. patent system is fundamentally broken. Read more
Many academic studies of the patent system focus on the negative, extrapolating from anecdotes about a few bad actors to make the case that our patent system is broken and to bolster cries for legislation weakening patent rights. Precious few studies focus on the countless honest and hardworking patent owners whose inventive labors benefit us all. Read more
Last March, forty economists and law professors submitted a letter to Congress expressing “deep concerns with the many flawed, unreliable, or incomplete studies about the American patent system that have been provided to members of Congress.” These concerns were confirmed again last week when Unified Patents released a report on patent litigation with the same kind of “highly exaggerated claims regarding patent trolls” that the professors were concerned about. Read more
