New Patent Reform Legislation Being Drafted

• Oct 10 2013
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• Category: News

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte recently released a second discussion draft of legislation aimed at preventing abusive patent troll litigation.  The new draft includes inter alia, heightened pleading requirements, fee shifting (requiring the loser in a patent case to pay attorney’s fees and costs), a requirement that patent trolls reveal the real party in interest, a requirement that courts to stay patent litigation against customers when there is parallel litigation against the manufacturer.  While the Coalition for Patent Fairness and executives from member companies Google, Cisco and Oracle continue to press for new patent reforms, the founder and chief executive of, Intellectual Ventures, often derided as the world’s largest patent troll, has added lobbying help and continue to make the case that patents benefit inventors.

A summary of the legislation can be found athttps://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/09/troll-killing-patent-reform-one-step-closer

The text of the bill can be found athttps://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/goodlatte_2nd_patent_reform_discussion_draft.pdf