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Testimony on patent reform on 30 April 2009

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Rick Merritt gave a summary of testimony on the draft Patent Reform Act of 2009 (HR 1260) which included

Top attorney's for Cisco Systems and Intel Corp.?both members of the Coalition on Patent Fairness?testified in favor of the bill, asking members to bolster provisions limiting damages. "The threat of a jackpot award is real," said Mark Chandler, general counsel for Cisco in his testimony.

In the past seven years 15 cases have awarded damages greater than $100 million and at least five were over $500 million, Chandler said. He also asked for provisions that would give companies who independently invented a technology immunity from infringement claims.

David Simon, chief patent counsel for Intel, asked members to back apportionment, an approach tying damages to the portion of a product's value an infringed patent represents. In its compromise, the Senate committee threw out apportionment in favor of a so-called gatekeeper function in which judges instruct juries on using one or more of the guidelines developed by a Georgia-Pacific case.

Simon called those guidelines "vague and uncertain, and not at all up to the task of providing meaningful guidance to judges and juries."

There was a link from the Merritt article to a white paper:

This white paper, from Semiconductor Insights, discusses how competitive intelligence gathered from examining recent patent applications can be used to better understand competitors via knowledge of their capabilities, plans and weaknesses.

To first order, the patent system is about public disclosure of information. Although Intel and Cisco ARE worried about damages (and are NOT very worried about being labelled "copyists"), the public benefits from the progress created by the disclosure of the information. "How the money is divided" is a question for the marketplace if deals can be made, and for the courts, if deals can't be made. Patents get inventors to the table so deals can be proposed.

**Returning to the testimony before Congress, see also

Patent Reform 2009 Amendments SD 226 Judicial Committe

Lunatic

Full post as published by IPBiz on May 02, 2009 (boomark / email).