Patent lawsuits are disruptive, unpredictable, and costly. The inability to anticipate patent litigation makes it practically uninsurable, exposes companies to late-stage suits, and drives companies to rapidly accumulate patents in order to ward off litigation. This article confronts this...

Over the last two decades, more than a thousand amici, representing hundreds of organizations, companies, and individuals, have signed onto amicus briefs in over a hundred patent cases, many of them landmark decisions. This paper turns the spotlight on these “behind-the-scenes” actors in the...

The International Trade Commission (ITC) provides a special forum for adjudicating patent disputes involving imports. It offers several advantages over U.S. district courts to patentees, including relaxed jurisdictional requirements, speed, and unique remedies. Unlike district courts, the ITC...

This report, supported by funding from the New America Foundation, details the experiences of startups with patent assertion based on surveys of about 300 venture capitalists and venture-backed startups conducted in 2013. According to survey responses, patents for novel inventions play a...

Last year, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation were accused of patent infringement. Their alleged wrongdoing? Purchasing routers and using them to provide wireless services. A small Atlanta-based company called Bluewave, along with hundreds to thousands...

Patent litigation is expensive. The primary motivation for the creation of a patent small claims proceeding is to make enforcement more affordable. However, in the twenty or so years since the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) first endorsed the idea of a small claims patent...

The DOJ and FTC held a hearing on patent assertion entities (PAE, defined as an entity that uses patent primarily to obtain license fees, rather than to support the transfer or commercialization of technology) on Dec 10. This talk gives an overview of the economics, policy of patent assertion...

The problems with software patents are old and well-known. However it’s not for a lack of trying that they have persisted. Software and tech companies have been pushing Congress to fix things for years. Each time they do, however, industries that rely crucially on the patent system, like...

While patent assertion entities ("PAEs" or patent “trolls”) have received a lot of attention, little of it has focused on the distributional impacts of their demands. The impact of PAEs on startups is crucial, because startups contribute to job creation and innovation, making them potential...

One of the most urgent problems with the US patent system is that there are too many patents of poor quality. Most blame the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) – its mistakes, overly generous grant rate, and lack of consistency. But, the quality and quantity of patents in force is the...