Patent Reform Act of 2007 - Update
No sooner had I posted on this blog that the Senate had not voted a patent reform bill out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Committee, like the House Judiciary Committee a few days earlier, produced its own version of patent reform legislation for the full Senate to consider. Based on a statement by Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Senate bill would:
- Reduce the incentives for patent litigation by making it harder for patent owners to show that another company has willfully infringed its patents (and consequently making it harder to receive an award of treble damages and possibly attorney’s fees);
- Establish regulatory procedures for re-evaluating patents after they are granted;
- Include limitations on the availability of jurisdictions where patent holders can file lawsuits by requiring suits to be filed where the plaintiffs or defendants are located, where the alleged infringement took place, or where the parties were incorporated or formed (this limitation could affect the number of filings in popular forums like the plaintiff-friendly Eastern District of Texas, which in 2006 surpassed the Central District of California as the hot-bed of patent litigation in the U.S., according to statistics provided by The Patent Troll Tracker).
