Time to stop patent trolls

For businesses in the fiercely competitive retail sector, innovation drives success. This can be seen in the explosion of Web and mobile e-commerce tools many retailers have recently deployed. Unfortunately, innovation in our industry is being threatened by a barrage of frivolous lawsuits and shakedown-style settlement demands from patent-assertion entities, more commonly known as patent trolls.

It’s a problem impacting retailers in Rhode Island and across the country, costing our economy billions of dollars every year, and preventing businesses from investing in jobs and passing on savings to our customers. But fixing the patent-troll problem is doable, and it’s one thing that Washington can actually get done this year.

Many would like to speak out more vocally about these frivolous lawsuits, but they are concerned that if they do, they will be targeted by even more patent trolls.

The majority of these demand letters and lawsuits are extremely vague and businesses, particularly small businesses, aren’t equipped to interpret the poorly construed allegations. But when litigation often costs upwards of $1 million, settling for far less can be preferred even if the defendant is completely innocent of any patent infringement.

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These lawsuits often mean that businesses are forced to divert what limited resources they have to fight off baseless infringement charges.

Congress came close to passing strong patent-litigation reform last year. When Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., reintroduced the Innovation Act this year, he did so with the support of colleagues from both sides of the aisle. This same bill passed the House in 2013. It’s time to finish the job and put an end to patent trolls once and for all.

It is important that any bill that Congress does pass sends a clear message to patent trolls. We urge Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee which is taking up the issue of patent reform, and other policymakers to stop trolls from sending abusive demand letters to small and local businesses. When companies are sued, they should be explicitly aware of the claims being made and the patents in question. •

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