Patent Law

Josh Lerner's new book: Boulevard of Broken Dreams

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Josh Lerner teaches a class on venture capital and will publish a book this fall called ?Boulevard of Broken Dreams? on how public efforts to spur entrepreneurship and venture capital have, so far, failed.

He said the venture capital industry needs to focus on three other ideas to fix its problems.

First is patent policy. Patent litigation costs so much and takes so long that it is burdening small tech companies, he said.

Instead, he suggests a patent policy similar to that in Europe. There, he said, inventors can challenge patents with the patent office before patents are approved. In the United States, on the other hand, most patents are granted quickly and protesters have to go to court to fight them.

When there are patent trials, they should not be jury trials, he said, even though that has become increasingly common in the last two decades. Patent disputes are so technically and legally complicated that it is difficult for a jury to fairly decide the case in a short period of time, and they are almost always sympathetic to the patent holder.

IPBiz notes that small tech companies are the ones fighting patent reform generally, and oppositions specifically. IPBiz notes that Lerner may be the only person who thinks "most patents are granted quickly" in the US.

Lerner's previous book (with Jaffe) displayed similar misunderstandings of the patent system.

Full post as published by IPBiz on May 04, 2009 (boomark / email).