Patent Law Practice Center

An interview with Congressman Thomas Massie

“I can tell you, every day Congress is in session, there are lobbyists here trying to weaken the patent system,” Congressman Thomas Massie explained to me when I interviewed him on June 28, 2017.

In Massie’s words, those companies that come to Capitol Hill and lobby to weaken the patent system want to get into new fields, but the problem is they didn’t invent in those fields, so they face problems. Patent problems. A lot of those companies want to become automobile manufacturers, or cell phone manufacturers, or they want to write software for operating systems, but they didn’t invent in those areas and they don’t own the patents that have historically been the touchstone of innovation ownership. “They’d love to just come in and start playing in those fields and start using their size and scale as an advantage, and to them, patents look like a hindrance,” Massie explained. “They are here in Congress looking to weaken patents and they are not just interested in weakening patents issued in the future, they are looking to weaken all patents.”

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115th Congress: Meet the Key Republicans on IP Reform

On January 3, 2017, the 115th Congress officially convened. In the Senate, it will be the Senate Judiciary Committee where any action relating to intellectual property reform will play out during the 115th Congress. In the House of Representatives, it will be the House Judiciary Committee that will be the body of primary importance insofar as any intellectual property reforms are concerned. Unlike the Senate, in the House, the front line action will take place in subcommittee, specifically the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet will take the lead for the full House Judiciary Committee.

Unlike in previous years, we enter 2017 without much support for a fresh round of patent reform, but at least some patent reform measures are sure to be introduced during the 115th Congress. In fact, just recently Congressman Bob Goodlatte, who is once again Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, put forth his legislative agenda which included patent litigation reform. Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) is also talking about it being time for Congress to amend 35 U.S.C. 101.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), pictured left, will once again be chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Grassley is a strong supporter of the development of wind, solar, biodiesel, biomass and ethanol as a sustainable, domestic, renewable energy source, which is not surprising since he comes from the heart of America’s farmland. Grassley is a pragmatic politician. In April 2014, when large entities were pushing hard for the latest round of patent reform to pass, Grassley pumped the breaks, acknowledging that there were significant differences of opinion on the need for additional reform. “Sometimes it takes more time than we’d like, but, the end result is a better product. I’m willing to sacrifice a little time to develop a bipartisan bill that we can all support.”  Grassley’s pragmatic approach slowed things down during the 113th Congress, but Grassley introduced the PATENT Act in the 114th Congress. Throughout the 114th Congress, Grassley’s staff was aggressively searching for stories about small businesses being abused by patent trolls, which he could use to give patent reform momentum. Such momentum never materialized, despite the fact that the PATENT Act was able to pass the Judiciary Committee. It is believed that Grassley remains supportive of patent reforms that most inventors would deem unacceptable. (more…)

Hulk Hogan victory over Gawker shows problems with a bond requirement

A Florida jury recently awarded $115 million to former professional wrestler turned reality TV star Hulk Hogan.  As you might expect, Gawker immediately announced they would appeal. Unfortunately for Gawker, thanks to Florida law, they could be required to post a bond of up to $50 million for the privilege of appealing this decision. Posting a bond that large, Gawker argues, would imperil their ability to defend themselves and mount an appeal. Indeed, this verdict could destroy Gawker altogether.

Without getting into the substance of the Hogan vs. Gawker lawsuit, the issue of posting bonds to appeal is quite relevant in the ongoing debate over patent reform. While the philosophy behind a bond requirement makes some sense, in practice there are serious issues with prohibiting a party from appealing a decision unless they can post a ridiculously expensive bond.

The issue of bonds has been an important matter for innovators. The bond requirement has been promoted by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), for example, as a way to curb abusive patent litigation by forcing those who have lost to reasonably assure the victorious party that the losing party can cover any resulting losses to the appellee before they can appeal.  VCs, universities and others object to the bond requirement and related measures that would enable defendants to get “real parties in interest” to shift fees, arguing that the real motivation is simply to make it financially impossible to ever assert a patent in the first place.

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A patent reform conversation with Senator Coons and Congressman Massie

On Wednesday, October 7, 2015, I moderated a live Google Hangout with U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) and Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY). The conversation took place in Senator Coons’ office in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, DC. Our conversation, hosted by the Innovation Alliance’s save the inventor campaign, focused on the major pending patent reform bills – the Innovation Act (H.R. 9) in the House of Representatives and the PATENT Act (S. 1137) in the Senate.

The first question I posed to Senator Coons and Congressman Massie was a broad-based, philosophical question. Unlike with virtually all other issues, patent reform is not a partisan political issue. Allegiance does not break down along party lines, but rather seems to depend philosophically on whether the individual believes patents promote innovation or whether patents hinder the progress of innovation. To start, I asked that simple question. Do patents promote or hinder innovation?

Senator Coons, who is a believer in s strong patent system, didn’t directly answer the question presented, although he did acknowledge that the question is “whether or not you think patents are essential and being able to defend those patents are essential to the vibrancy of our innovation system.” While he did not specifically say that he thinks patents are essential in this exchange, Senator Coons is on record with such views in many different forums. He is also the author and primary sponsor of the STRONG Patents Act, which presents an alternative patent reform that is widely recognized as being pro-patent and pro-innovator.

Coons, who spoke without notes and in a way that demonstrates a deep understanding of the issues, continually reiterated the need for patents to be defendable in court. He said, for instance:

Common across the advocates for a strong patent system in the House and the Senate is a profound belief that this constitutionally created and vital property right has to be defensible…that patent litigation has to remain capable of defending unique inventions, thus the Save the Inventor campaign. And those who are advancing the bills both in the House and the Senate that would change the patent litigation system are gravely concerned about what they view as so-called patent trolls and in the only hearing that we had in the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss the bill in the current Congress, they really focused in on abusive patent litigation practices that do exist and that are a problem, but that I think can be dealt with more narrowly in a more focused and targeted way that just deals with abusive litigation practices…

On the issue of whether patents promote innovation, Congressman Massie’s response was hardly surprising to anyone familiar with the patent debate and Massie’s history. Massie is an inventor and one of only a few members of Congress to be a patent owner. He comes by his deeply rooted opinions out of experiences as an inventor and struggling entrepreneur. He said:

Well, you don’t have to believe or not believe, right? We’ve got 250 years of history in this country of innovation and we have the most innovation because we have the strongest patent system. The deal that our founding fathers gave us that was different from all the European models was what you create you own. And the charge that our Founding Fathers gave us in Congress was to promote the useful arts and sciences by granting for a limited period of time the exclusive use of an inventor’s works. So what we have to do is to decide, within that charter, how do you promote useful arts and sciences, and for what period of time? There are some people that believe that zero period of time is the correct period of time. That does not work.

Massie would then pivot to explain his own story, which is a very familiar story of an inventor starting from nothing to create a business built on the back of patented technology. Massie explained:

I’m not a lawyer, I’m an engineer. I went to MIT and I studied electrical and mechanical engineering because I love creating and right there in the laboratory and in the labs next to me people were inventing stuff all of the time and the great thing about being there in that hotbed at MIT is everybody wanted to start a company and the way you started a company was you had to go get capital and nobody was going to invest unless you had some intellectual property. So my startup that I spun out of MIT, my wife and I…we started right there in a married student housing dormitory…was licensed from MIT, from the Technology Licensing Office. Then, we went out and got venture capital and they believed in us and they knew we had a chance, but we had this limited period of time to get a return on that investment before the invention became public domain. That’s the great thing about patents. The deal you make with society is I’m going to tell you everything about how to copy this idea, and when my exclusivity lapses, everybody in the world can have it.

The entire video is available via YouTube. For a more complete transcript, please visit IPWatchdog.com.

 

Patent Reform in the House of Representatives

The Innovation Act (H.R. 9) has gotten the most publicity in the House of Representatives, but there are several other pending bills in the House, including the TROL Act, which has already been voted out of Committee.

What follows is a summary of the other patent reform bills pending in the House.

The TROL Act

The Targeting Rogue and Opaque Letters Act, more commonly referred to as the TROL Act, was introduced during the 113th Congress and passed the House Commerce Subcommittee with bipartisan support. The TROL Act addresses sending bad faith patent demand letters, clarifying that such activity may violate the Federal Trade Commission Act. The Act defines bad faith as either false or misleading statements or omissions, whether knowingly false, made with reckless indifference to the truth, or made with an awareness of a high probability that the statements or omissions would deceive the sender intentionally. The TROL Act also further authorizes the FTC and state attorneys general to bring actions to stop the abusive behavior, but also provides a good faith affirmative defense. The Act would further preempt any state law or regulation expressly relating to the transmission or contents of communications relating to the assertion of patent rights.

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