A reader writes:
I’m a patent attorney (and subscriber…) with over 20 years of experience. I’m not saying patent “trolls” are not an issue, but they are nowhere near the problem made out the graph you displayed and the president’s release yesterday. In 2011, Obama signed what was then called “patent reform,” a large piece of legislation that made many changes to the patent system. One of the changes, which was put in solely to address the alleged patent trolling problem, required that, in effect, you can only file suit against one accused infringer per case. So if you have a patent you believe covers, let’s say, a memory chip, and all the memory chip makers manufacture essentially the same chip (which, due to industry standards, is the case), you can no longer file a single case naming all the memory manufacturers. Instead, you are forced to file separate cases against each. So what used to be one case is now 5-10 cases.
Funny how that law took effect in 2011, which is when the data shows the increase in the number of cases. As my father used to say, figures are for liars, and liars figure.
I’m with Drum. The only way to fix the patent system is the fix the Patent Office. They are overworked, abused, and starved of resources. I bet most people don’t know that the Patent Office is self-funded (i.e., all the money it needs to operate comes from user fees). By statute, the Patent Office’s fees are set at a level so that it collects all the money it needs to operate – not more, not less. The PTO does this, and then Congress raids that money and takes some of it away for other uses. We cannot expect the Patent Office to do its job without the money it requires to properly operate.
The 2011 statute I mentioned was supposed to stop fee diversion, but the word I’m getting is that it has not stopped Congress from raiding the Patent Office’s coffers.
