Blackmoor Vituperative

The U.S. patent system could be inching closer to an overhaul long desired by the technology industry.

[…]

Called the Patent Reform Act of 2006, the measure followed two years of hearings, meetings and debate, the senators said. It bears a number of similarities to a bill offered last summer by Texas Republican Lamar Smith in the House of Representatives.

Specifically, it would shift to a “first to file” method of awarding patents, which is already used in most foreign countries, instead of the existing “first to invent” standard, which has been criticized as complicated to prove. Such a change has already earned backing from Jon Dudas, chief of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The bill would also establish a “postgrant opposition” system that would allow outsiders to dispute the validity of a patent before a board of administrative judges within the Patent Office, rather than in the traditional court system. The idea behind such a proceeding, also endorsed by the Patent Office, is to stave off excessive litigation.

[…]

In addition, the Hatch-Leahy bill would place new restrictions on the courts where patent cases could be filed–an attempt at rooting out “forum shopping” for districts known for favorable judges. It would also curb the amount of damages for winners of infringement suits. Perhaps most notably, and in a departure from the House version, courts would have to calculate the royalties owed by infringers based solely on the economic value of the “novel and nonobvious features” covered by the disputed patent, not on the value of the product as a whole.

Technology companies have been lobbying hard for putting such a requirement into law, complaining that it’s unfair to require massive payouts based on lost profits for an entire product that can contain hundreds of thousands of patented components if only one or two are infringed. Such a system, some argue, has contributed to the rise of “patent trolls”–that is, companies that exist primarily to make money from patent litigation and are using the system to force lucrative settlements.

(from ZDNet, Senators offer sweeping patent system changes)

It’s about damned time. This bill won’t fix everything wrong with our patent sustem — it still allows algorithms to be patented, for example — but at least it is a step in the right direction.