EYE ON WASHINGTON
A Patent Owner Defending Property Rights Is Not a Bully BY GENE QUINN
40 INVENTORS DIGEST FEBRUARY 2016
Various pending patent-reform bills that are stalled in Congress have provisions relating to abusive, fraudulent and misleading demand letters sent by patent owners. If ignoring demand letters is both an acceptable and viable strategy, why is it necessary to encumber the Patent Act with superfluous and unnecessary legislation? Simply ignore the letter sent by the patent owner, and everything will be fine. No further patent-reform legislation is required.
Bad Legal Advice
As an attorney, I find it astonishing that anyone would advise a person to ignore a letter that puts him on notice that he is, or may be, infringing an issued patent. Sure, there are bad actors in the industry who dramatically overstate matters in demand letters, but is someone who is not legally trained capable of making the fine-line distinctions between an abusive demand letter and a legitimate business grievance? It is an extraordinarily bad recommendation to ignore a letter that suggests the sender has an actionable grievance against the recipient.
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C
olleen Chien, a law professor at Santa Clara University and a former senior advisor to President Obama on intellectual property and innovation, recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal that small businesses may want to simply ignore letters they receive from patent owners alleging infringement of a patent. This is rather astonishing for several reasons. First, a patent is a right granted by the federal government that is presumed to be legally valid. A recent senior advisor to the president that is advising potential infringers they should ignore notices telling them they are infringing speaks volumes about how the executive branch views patents and patent owners. Once upon a time, patents and inventors were highly regarded in our society; today they are seen as nuisances that can and probably should be ignored, even by the White House. It is also astonishing to hear a former senior advisor to President Obama suggest that it is appropriate to ignore a letter alleging patent infringement, since his administration has been so thoroughly supportive of further rounds of patent reform.