The Daily Caller: Chinese Patent-Infringer Backs US Patent Reform, by Peter Fricke
This post originally appeared in The Daily Caller on May 5, 2015.
Needed a reason to be skeptical of U.S. patent reform? Here it is: Reform efforts now have the support of a Chinese company with a history of violating U.S. patents.
ZTE, a state-controlled Chinese telecommunications firm, announced in April that it would join the United for Patent Reform (UPR) coalition, according to TMC Net, leading some to worry that the reforms might enable Chinese firms to steal foreign technology more easily.
The coalition supports efforts to reform the U.S. patent system to prevent frivolous patent litigation, also known as patent trolling. Many believe trolling has become more common in recent years, thanks to the activities of patent assertion entities (PAE’s)— organizations that stockpile patents solely for the purpose of filing infringement suits, with no intention of putting the parents to productive use.
American Conservative Union Executive Director Dan Schneider, who lived in China during the 1980s, told The Daily Caller News Foundation that he believes ZTE’s actual motivation is to reduce the cost of acquiring new patents by making it more difficult for inventors to defend their intellectual property.