Protecting American Talent and Entrepreneurship (PATENT) Act

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S.1137: Protecting American Talent and Entrepreneurship (PATENT) Act (2015) (Congress)

The PATENT Act was introduced on April 29, 2015 by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and referred to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. On September 8, 2015, the bill was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders. Currently the bill has 6 cosponsors (3 Republicans and 3 Democrats). The full title of the bill is "A bill to amend title 35, United States Code, and the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act to make improvements and technical corrections, and for other purposes."

GovTrack predicts the PATENT Act has a 36% chance of being enacted.

Summary

Pleading and early disclosure

The PATENT Act requires patent owners to identify each claim of each patent allegedly infringed and which products or processes are infringing. If the details are not available, the patent owner must explain why.

Discovery limits

The PATENT Act requires a court to stay expensive discovery pending the resolution of preliminary motions, such as the dismissal of a case, a change of venue, of the severance of accused infringers.

Fees and recovery

The act provides that reasonable attorney fees will be awarded if the court finds that the non-prevailing party was not objectively reasonable. This prevents patent trolls from extorting their targets into settling for thousands of dollars rather than spending millions of dollars in legal battles.

Disclosure of patent ownership

requires patent holders to disclose to the PTO whenever there is an assignment of interest in the patent that results in a change of ultimate parent entity

Small business provisions

directs PTO to develop educational resources for businesses targeted by patent suits and to create a list of pending patent cases on its website