What is a bad patent? Congress has established the requirements for obtaining a patent. The patent office grants a patent to applicants when they meet those requirements. It is simple. No trolls involved. If there are bad patents, then either the law is bad, or the patent office is not following the law when they grant the patents.

Is the patent office issuing patents that do not meet the requirements set forth by Congress in the Patent Act?

Or is the Patent Act too generous in setting forth the conditions for granting a patent?

It must be one or the other. This subcommittee should focus there, not on the inventors and their licensors who are following the law.

I followed the law with all of my inventions. I have received 6 patents for my Bunch O Balloons invention. They were diligently and thoroughly examined by the patent office, signed by Michelle Lee and Joe Matal. They met the demanding standard for a preliminary injunction – no substantial question of validity – 4 times in district court, including an affirmance at the Federal Circuit. Are these bad patents? The infringer’s attorney’s certainly think so.

Roman Chistyakov, David Furry, Alex Severinsky, Gene Dolgoff, Tom Lanni, Alfonso Cioffi – these inventors and their licensors followed the law and the patent office followed the law when they granted their patents. Of course attorneys for infringers like Ford, FLIR, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Gillette, Epson, Sony, and Apple think they are “bad patents”. Thousands of other legitimate inventors are labeled “trolls” by big infringers and their supporters, and suffer the harsh laws and policies targeted to fend off the imaginary creatures.

Naturally, infringers believe every asserted patent is a “bad patent”.

Tom Lee of Mapbox presumably believes that Martin Jones’ patent for his logistics notification invention is a “bad patent”. But Martin followed the law – he did not lie, cheat, or steal to get his patent. In fact the docket shows that Mapbox resolved the dispute over Martin’s patent in only a matter of weeks without filing a single brief. Either it was not a “bad patent”, or it was so bad it was no problem at all. Perhaps Tom Lee can enlighten the subcommittee as to which case it is.

The infringer of my patents was not so easy to deal with – as I have incurred over 1300 docket entries, spanning 2 and half years, and $17M in expenses.

Continue reading article here.

First published by IPWatchdog. By Josh Malone