Frivolous lawsuits filed by NPEs place a crushing burden on the American businesses that create jobs across all sectors of the economy. Important court rulings and legislative action in recent years have stabilized the system, but now those necessary reforms are under attack.
Progress has been made to address abusive litigation practices over the past few years, including:
2011 – Passage of the America Invents Act in 2011, which provided the Inter Partes Review program to review bad patents efficiently at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
2014 – The Supreme Court's unanimous Alice decision in 2014, which set out important precedent that enables lower courts to throw out meritless and costly patent litigation early on instead of allowing it to drag on for years.
Both developments give businesses the ability to fight bad patents instead of settling or enduring long and expensive court proceedings.
Some members of Congress and the PTO want to clawback this progress because of baseless criticisms, leaving businesses without key tools to fight against patent litigation abuse.
38% – Percent increase in the frequency of patent litigation brought by patent trolls in recent months.
In addition to protecting IPR and the benefits of the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Section 101 of the Patent Act in Alice, the coalition supports a number of reforms, available here in our Core Principles.