Changes

An ecosystem supportive of innovation must be competitive but also protective and regulated. Too much trade protection reduced competition thus hurting innovation while too many regulations hurt innovation by prolonging time to move an idea into The Founding Fathers had the market. However, a lack of protection and regulations reduce incentive to innovate by enabling copycat ideas and making it difficult to profit off on innovation. Concurrently, a poorly executed regulatory and protection system, such as making it trivial foresight to patent ideas, can lead to valid innovation being blocked by frivolous legal challenges. There is little doubt as to what happens at include patents among the extremes of these spectrums functions of protection and competition, but the equilibrium necessary for a thriving innovative ecosystem has yet to be found. Where federal government in the United States lies on this spectrum is being continually readjusted due to pending legislation and court casesconstitution (Article I, as well as ramifications from prior legal actionsSection 8). While George Washington urged Congress to implement protections for innovation in his first State of the most prominent reform in recent years has been Union address resulting the America Invents Act, a variety third act of court cases working their way up the legal system may create fundamental changes in how the United States protects and regulates innovation. Pending legislation, chiefly first Congress: the Innovation Patent Act and PATENT (Promoting American Talent and Entrepreneurship) Act, seek to ameliorate the current intellectual property regulatory environmentof 1790. The main issue these bills seek to resolve is that Framers’ recognition of “patent trolls” or in other terms, non-practicing entities. Proponents the crucial importance of these bills contend that reducing legal threats posed by NPEs will expedite innovation while opponents claim to economic growth has served as the bills broadly define non-practicing entities and such definitions benefit large established corporations while harming small ones. Naturally, large tech companies support such bills while small inventors and non-practicing entities oppose these measures. Effective reform solid foundation of the US patent free enterprise system requires balancing the interests of all actors involved. All these parties are active innovators but excessive or insufficient regulation discourages innovation and the willingness to invest in research and development.

Since 2016 This strong system of intellectual property protection needs to be updated to fulfill the Framers’ intentions. The balancing act of protecting intellectual property and preventing exploitation of those protections has proved difficult to accomplish. At either extreme, the value of patents and, in tandem, incentive to innovate, is diminished. Due to lobbying from special interest groups and large corporations, the current patent system shortsightedly addresses scapegoats rather than solving chronic issues. Patent enforcement must simultaneously support innovation and protect intellectual property. Too much regulation hinders innovation by prolonging the time needed to move an election year idea into the market. No protection of intellectual property reduces the incentive to innovate and hinders economic growth. Poorly designed, intrusive government regulation leads to frivolous legal challenges.  The 2011 America Invents Act (AIA) was geared to assuage concerns about patent trolls -- entities that raise revenue by enforcing patents they acquire without implementing them -- while benefiting large corporations at the expense of small businesses and individual inventors. Small companies and individual inventors were forced to file earlier and are unable to patent ideas if they are brought to market before patenting. Additionally, smaller entities that lack capital may be unable to patent ideas or enforce their patents against large corporations due to higher costs under the provisions in the AIA. Large corporations and lobbyists have hoodwinked policy is not makers, convincing them NPEs are the largest threat to the patent system. In reality, they are but a particularly sexy issueminor threat, even for large corporations. Pending legislation, chiefly the Innovation Act and PATENT (Promoting American Talent and Entrepreneurship) Act, continues this unnecessary focus on fighting trolls, we can expect while doing little action to reform resolve other issues regarding the patent system from Congress. Both the Innovation Act, introduced by Rep. Goodlatte of Virginia, and the PATENT act, introduced by Sen. Grassley of Iowa, fail to distinguish between Patent policy is not Assertion Entities (trolls) and NPEs, of which PAE’s are a pressing issue for most voterssubset. While many PAE’s are bad actors who only enforce patents to financial gain without innovating themselves, NPEs include small businesses and individual inventors who want to protect and license their intellectual property. With Rather than reducing the threat that saidPAEs pose to small businesses, these bills will unfairly benefit large established corporations while harming small businesses. While this legislation may move forward in the next Congress, neither bill has made progress since moving out of committee.   Congress has failed to fulfill its constitutional mandate to protect intellectual property. In the resulting vacuum, many of the major reforms to patent policy has come from court decisions and the . The next major decision we can expect expected will regard likely involve the constitutionality of inter partes review, or (IPR, ) that was introduced with the American Invents Act of 2011. Inter partes review is a process enabling IPR enables third parties to challenge the validity of patents based on prior art evidence to an internal patent office board. The casePrior art is vaguely defined but can encompass any and all knowledge, products, MCM Portfolio LLC vs Hewlett-Packardprevious patents, is pending petition from or publications that demonstrate use of the claims in the Supreme Court and can be expected to be heard sometime challenged patent before the end of 2017that patent was filed. IPR has led to an increase of challenges to the validity of patents and opponents . Opponents of IPR claim it harms small companies businesses and individual inventors by decreasing intellectual property rights. IPR has made it cheaper and easier to challenge patent claimswithout increasing the number of patents being invalidated. MCM Portfolio LLC vs Hewlett-Packard, but is pending petition from the Supreme Court and can be expected to be heard sometime before the existence end of 2017. This case calls into question whether IPR violates Article III of the constitution and if it violates the 7th amendment. The Article III issue arises since IPR has not increased is conducted before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, an administrative division of the USPTO, rather than before federal judges in court. Following from this, the 7th Amendment, which guarantees a right to trial by jury, is claimed to be violated during the IPR process as there is no trial nor jury. We can expect a steady trickle of cases attacking provisions of the American Invents Act though the number success of patents being invalidatedsuch cases cannot yet be predicted. To fulfill their constitutional obligation to protect intellectual property, Congress must act to reform the patent system. Inaction will harm small business and lead to jurists deciding matters that the Framers intended to leave to the legislature.