Today (April 29) U.S. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Ranking Member Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX), Charles Schumer (D- NY), Mike Lee (R-UT), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), introduced the Protecting American Talent and Entrepreneurship Act of 2015 (PATENT Act), which includes important reforms to the patent-litigation system. The following statement should be attributed to Michael E. Glover, Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel, public policy and government affairs:
“Verizon commends Chairman Grassley, Ranking Member Leahy, and Senators Cornyn, Schumer, Lee, Hatch, and Klobuchar for their strong leadership in crafting a balanced, bipartisan bill that preserves innovators’ ability to defend their patents, while cutting down on abusive patent litigation tactics that hurt inventors big and small.
“The PATENT Act recognizes that the goal of patent law is to promote innovation. The problem is that today, some use baseless patent litigation to hinder innovation, not promote it. When they accuse innovators of infringement, they seek not the value of the patent, but some fraction of what the innovator would have to pay to fight them in court. This kind of abuse of the patent litigation system has become a serious problem for American innovators nationwide. The PATENT Act makes patent litigation more efficient, driving down the incentive to bring abusive patent litigation in the first place and helping to restore patent law to its original goal: promoting innovation.”