Law360: Patent Troll Abuses Overblown In Congress, Judges Say, by Jess Davis
This post originally appeared in Law360 on October 22, 2015.
Abusive patent litigation is less of a problem in the real world than it’s presumed to be in media reports and in Congress, and patent litigation could be better streamlined not by Congressional intervention but by smart case management by judges, several judges said during a Thursday panel.
Judges speaking at a panel of the Eastern District of Texas Bench-Bar Conference said the horror stories of patent trolls shutting down businesses with abusive litigation don’t jibe with what federal judges from across the country see in court, and they are concerned an overreaction by Congress would disrupt the courts and make it harder to litigate all patent cases. Businesses and patent holders in the U.S. would be better served if both judges and patent litigators broke from the mold and used lower-cost practices to resolve disputes, they said.