Weer een mooi stukje over patentbreuken. Hier komt TRCA uit als een patentrolls, echt interessant om te lezen:
Experts say patent 'trolls' are tough t (Not rated) 11 minutes ago Experts say patent 'trolls' are tough to define
IDG News Service 6/15/06
Grant Gross, IDG News Service, Washington Bureau
A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee, seeking to reduce legal claims by owners of illegitimate patents, heard Thursday that it's difficult to define just what is a bogus patent claim.
The goal of Thursday's hearing, said subcommittee Chairman Lamar Smith, was to define so-called patent trolls, which some patent-reform advocates say are those who own patents solely for the purpose of collecting license fees or suing alleged infringers.
"The patent system should reward creativity, not legal gamesmanship," said Smith, a Texas Republican and sponsor of patent overhaul legislation called the Patent Reform Act. Smith's wide-ranging bill would limit damages in some patent cases, allow a new patent challenge mechanism and allow third parties to submit evidence that a patent application contains someone else's invention.
But four witnesses, including Segway scooter inventor Dean Kamen, told the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property that defining who exactly is a patent troll become complicated in the details. Some people have defined patent trolls as patent holders who don't develop their inventions, and Kamen's firm pitches its patents to a larger company to develop the products, he said.
"I only recently found out, after reading the definition of a troll, that I am one," said Kamen, whose DEKA Research and Development Corp. has invented several medical products. "It's maybe a little bit unfair and dangerous to characterize people who license products as trolls."
Kamen questioned the committee's efforts to limit the patent infringement lawsuits. He and other inventors have said lawsuits are one of the few protections small inventors have against large companies stealing their patents.
The U.S. Supreme Court in May ruled that judges should not automatically enforce injunctions against companies found to infringe patents, but if patent holders don't have exclusive rights to determine what happens to their patents, then the value of patents is limited, Kamen said.
"When I walk into that large company, they've got marketing, they've got distribution," he said. "If I show them what I've got, the only thing I have on my side of the table is that patent. The only way to get them to commit huge resources to turn that into the product, is to say to them, 'You exclusively have the right to do this.'"
Other witnesses agreed that labeling some people as patent trolls would be less effective than defining actions that Congress should prohibit. Congress should focus on identifying bad behavior, "whoever engages in it," said Ed Reines, a patent lawyer with Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP.
But representatives of Amazon.com Inc. and Time Warner Inc. called on Congress to rebalance patent rights between patent holders and patent users.
Congress should limit the number of court venues in which patent infringement lawsuits can be filed, and it should limit the damages in cases where the patent holders aren't practicing the patent, said Chuck Fish, Time Warner's vice president and chief patent counsel.
It's too easy for some patent holders to get damages for lost profits, even when they don't compete with the company they've sued for patent infringement, added Paul Misener, Amazon.com's vice president for public policy.
The overriding problem is the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issuing bad patents, Fish said. He praised the subcommittee for looking at ways to improve the patent-issuing process.
Current patent law is also "not balanced," Fish said. "There is a harmful trend that exists toward speculation and litigation based on patents, and away from product innovation that is supported by strong intellectual property rights."
Patent trolls have thrived as American industries have churned out more and more high-tech gizmos containing dozens or even hundreds of patented bits of technology. In accepting the case and ruling as they did, the justices seemed to have had it in mind to hem in their power.
But doesn't the ruling also hurt bona fide inventors, not to mention the many universities that fund their research and own the patents? To be sure, it plainly erodes the power that has been typically bestowed by a patent. Patent law unambiguously grants owners of intellectual property the same rights as regular property holders, including the right to exclude others from using their property. But the law also clearly states that injunctions "may"--not "shall"--be issued "in accordance with the principles of equity."
"All this is saying is that District Courts are free to use their discretion and to be fair. And it takes away a little of the edge from those patent-licensing operations," says Steven Bauer, a partner at Proskauer Rose in Boston who often represents biotech firms in patent disputes.
The justices drew the line on ruling out injunctive relief in all cases where the patent holder does not use the patents it owns to produce anything, as is often the case with universities. That makes the ruling somewhat less than an unmitigated victory for eBay, since the lower court had refrained from imposing an injunction on the basis of MercExchange's not using its patents.
The courts will have to work out on a case-by-case basis when an injunction is appropriate, says Mark Davis, a patent litigator at McDermott, Will & Emery in Washington, D.C. "There's going to be more uncertainty here, and it's going to take a while for the law to develop to figure out when you can expect an injunction," he says.