Patent News


Jun. 21, 2017

Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property Opinion: The STRONGER Patents Act: Important Legislation to Protect Our Innovation Economy, by David Lund

This post originally appeared in the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property on June 21, 2017.


Today, Senators Chris Coons, Tom Cotton, Dick Durbin, and Mazie Hirono introduced the Support Technology & Research for Our Nation’s Growth and Economic Resilience (STRONGER) Patents Act of 2017. This important piece of legislation will protect our innovation economy by restoring stable and effective property rights for inventors.

First and foremost, the STRONGER Patents Act will bring some much-needed balance to the post-issuance review systems administered by the USPTO’s Patent Trial an Appeal Board (PTAB). Until now, the PTAB has been a “death squad”; an arm of the USPTO killing patents that the same USPTO had previously issued. There are even examples where the PTAB has invalidated a patent that had previously been upheld by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.

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