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The most important text in this Supreme Court ruling is this: > District courts have the authority and responsibility to ensure that frivolous > cases—
by jimrandomh 11y ago
The most important text in this Supreme Court ruling is this:
> District courts have the authority and responsibility to ensure that frivolous
> cases—brought by companies using patents as a sword to go after defendants for
> money—are dissuaded, though no issue of frivolity has been raised here.
> Safeguards — including, e.g., sanctioning attorneys for bringing such suits, see
> Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 11 — combined with the avenues that accused inducers have
> to obtain rulings on the validity of patents, militate in favor of maintaining
> the separation between infringement and validity expressed in the Patent Act.
> Pp. 13–14
In the past, the district courts have failed utterly to fulfill this responsibility, and I question whether they have the de facto authority. The cited Rules of Civil Procedure - https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_11 https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_11 - are not a sufficient tool for the courts to fulfill this responsibility with. While this ruling makes it clear that they must do something, it seems as though it obligates them to invent new legal theories.
- monochromatic 11y agoThe most important text in the opinion is dicta?
- Mithaldu 11y ago> District courts have the authority and responsibility Foreigner here. Interpreting that bit literally makes me think that district courts, having the responsibility, can be held responsible for not fulfilling their responsibility. Is this correct, or is the above just waffly moral wording? If it is correct, what would be the means and path of holding a district court responsible?
- lisper 11y agoIt's waffly moral wording. It will have no effect. The problem is that issued patents are presumed to be valid, and hence prosecuting those patents is presumptively non-frivolous, even if they are later determined to be invalid. And it has to be that way, otherwise there would be no point in having a patent office at all. The problem really is not with the courts, it's with the patent office, which is issuing a flood of bogus patents. And they're doing that because there is no disincentive for them to issue bogus patents, while there is a significant disincentive for them to reject a bogus patent: the application can, at very little cost, pester the patent examiner until they cave in. I have personally tested this theory by obtaining a patent on a device that violates the laws of physics (http://www.google.com/patents/US20030133714 http://www.google.com/patents/US20030133714). I did this just as a lark so that I could have a personal data point to show just how broken the system is. But I didn't aim high (or low) enough. This patent: https://www.google.com/patents/US6368227 https://www.google.com/patents/US6368227 really should have been the one that embarrassed the PTO into real reform, but it didn't.
- Mithaldu 11y agoVery impressive response that more than answered my question and throws up questions like "Why is the patent office not being sued for gross negligence of duty?" Thanks for being so detailed.
- ScottBurson 11y agoThe system just hasn't been set up with the idea that it's important to protect the public against bad patents. I don't know if a lawsuit of the kind you suggest could possibly succeed. What I think is more likely is that Congress will eventually absorb the idea that a counterbalance of some kind is necessary. My own proposal is that bringing an infringement case should require the plaintiff to provide objective evidence that the invention is nonobvious. This evidence could be along the lines of what are called the "Graham factors" [0]: commercial success; long-felt but unsolved needs; and failure of others to solve the same problem. This evidence could be challenged by the defendant and would be weighed by the court. This would weaken the presumption that an issued patent is valid; but not, in my opinion, to the point of making the patent valueless. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_v._John_Deere_Co.#The_Patent_Act_of_1952 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_v._John_Deere_Co.#The_Pa...
- not_that_noob 11y agoYeah this is a punt from the supremes. Not going to happen.