The Hill Opinion: Bills to combat ‘patent trolls’ are actually counterproductive, by Nicole Neily
This post originally appeared in The Hill on September 14, 2016.
More than a decade of court decisions and patent legislation has completely remade the inner workings of the U.S. patent system. Five major court cases from 2006 to 2016, along with 2011’s America Invents Act, have changed intellectual property law in the United States more than the last 50 years combined.
Concurrently, a huge increase in innovation and ideas and patentable inventions from the technology sector has been taking place. These radical changes have completely shifted the lay of the land in intellectual property law; companies, inventors and even the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office are still feeling their way through the new laws.