Change is in the wind and it’s coming via Capitol Hill. The current issue of patent infringement abuse taking place in the court houses of Marshall, Texarkana, and Tyler Texas has Big Brother on its back now.
Facing this issue that is taking place in East Texas might not be on the top of the list of legislation, but it is definitely something that must be taken care of. The main issue is due mostly to the abuse that is taking place.
Although the term “patent troll” has been around for much longer, it has become more of a common phrase in the past 5-6 years. Patent trolls are the culprits responsible for the rise of patent infringement cases due to their excessive use of the court system in order to gain wealth.
Patent trolls are companies who look to push patent infringement to the limit by using any patents that they hold to target any other business that has a product or technology that has any similarity to their patent in order to sue them for damages.
More times than not they actually look to buy patents off of others. The government has taken notice of the abuse and has already submitted one bill to bring reform to patent infringement cases.
The major keys that they have identified is, first, to give the judges more responsibility by reviewing how much damage was done in by the product or technology and the other responsibility is to access how much really due to the company holding the patent.
The second major idea is to limit “forum shopping” that is, to limit cases being held in locations favorable to plaintiffs. So far no bills have been passed yet.
Whatever your perspective is about big government or little government, the abuse of the legal system has gotten them involved and that is just the beginning.
While considering the current issue of the number of “patent troll” cases taking place in the East Texas area I remembered a story I heard of a town in the Juarez Valley outside of the Mexican border city of Juarez.