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==Reasons for Patent Reform==
*Many patents are approved because [[United States Patent and Trademark Office]] examiners don’t have time or resources to search all the relevant references
**The current patent backlog, as of January 2016, is 561,585. [http://www.uspto.gov/dashboards/patents/main.dashxml (USPTO)]
**Total Pendency, time between patent filing and patent action, is 26.1 months, as of January 2016. [http://www.uspto.gov/corda/dashboards/patents/main.dashxml?CTNAVID=1004 (USPTO)]
***Total Pendency goal time is 20 months by FY2019. [http://www.uspto.gov/corda/dashboards/patents/main.dashxml?CTNAVID=1004 (USPTO)]
* “The past three decades of wanton patent-granting have created a disastrous environment for innovation. Today it’s practically impossible to build anything without violating a patent of some kind—and risking a multimillion-dollar lawsuit for your troubles.” [http://www.wired.com/2012/11/ff-steven-levy-the-patent-problem/ (Wired)]
*Technology industry has too many overly broad patents, leading to incredibly silly patent litigation cases
**Amazon “owns” the process that allows people to buy things with a single click.
**Apple now claims the exclusive right to sell rounded-edged, rectangular-shaped communication devices on which icons are arranged in a grid with a row of persistent icons at the bottom
**A small company in Tyler, Texas, once demanded more than $600 million from Google because of the design of the borders around its display ads.
*‘’’Patent Trolls’’’ are nonpracticing entities that don’t make products but exist solely on the revenue of its patents
**Costs a few thousand dollars to secure a patent, which can bring in millions through litigation
**It is usually more expensive to win a case against a troll than to just settle
*Last year, for the first time, spending by Apple and Google on patent lawsuits and unusually big-dollar patent purchases exceeded spending on research and development of new products, according to public filings. [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/patent-wars-among-tech-giants-can-stifle-competition.html?_r=0 (NYT-PW)]
*Me-too drugs: a drug that is approved after a pioneering drug and is the 'same'; it is not clinically superior to the original drug [http://www.who.int/intellectualproperty/topics/ip/Me-tooDrugs_Hollis1.pdf (WHO)]
→Reasons for Patent Reform
=Patent Reform=
==Proposed Legislation==
