14 DAY TRIAL // Patent trolls have a special place in our hearts, and not in a good way, but at least now we know that the US House of Representatives is trying to do something about them.
The federal legislative body has initiated the SHIELD act, where SHIELD stands for Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes.
Its sole purpose is to make sure that patent trolls can't go after targets as easily as they have been allowed to do up to now.
For those who need the record set straight, patent trolls are companies that don't produce anything but buy patents in order to have grounds for patent infringement lawsuits.
Their modus operandi is to wait for an IT company, new or old, to create some products and then sue them for infringement, hoping to secure settlement payments that will fund their continued existence.
SHIELD isn't going to bother trying to overhaul the legal system that allowed such horrible things to emerge.
Instead, it will make sure that the plaintiff starting a patent suit will pay the entire legal costs of the defendant if the plaintiff, or patent troll, is found not to have a “reasonable likelihood of succeeding.”
Interestingly, the bill implies that the plaintiff may have to cover the legal costs regardless of whether or not the defendant is using their technology.
Moreover, SHIELD will attempt to redefine what the software patent covers to “any process that could be implemented in a computer regardless of whether a computer is specifically mentioned in the patent.”
Representative Peter DeFazio and Representative Jason Chaffetz are the sponsors of the bill.
“The SHIELD Act ensures that American tech companies can continue to create jobs, rather than waste resources on fending off frivolous lawsuits,” Chaffetz said. “A single lawsuit, which may easily cost over $1 million if it goes to trial, can spell the end of a tech startup and the jobs that it could have created.”
The only gripe we have with SHIELD is that it isn't the type of thing that will deter larger companies from launching patent wars, as they won't have a problem paying that money.