ROYAL OAK – Every business needs to protect its technology, and some use patents to do so. Problem is a group of businesses commonly called patent trolls are literally using patent law to extort money from businesses by threatening to tie them up in court over alleged patent infringement. On the episode of M2 TechCast, Young Basile Intellectual Property Attorney Keith Schonberger discusses patent reform legislation to make it harder for trolls to do business.
Questions covered in this podcast include:
What is patent reform?
Doesn’t patent reform have something to do with patent trolls? We here about those in the news fairly often.
A lot of the discussion on patent reform focuses on so-called patent trolls, but there’s much more to it. For example, the most recent major act to be passed as patent reform, signed into law in 2011, is the America Invents Act, the central purpose of which was to change our filing system from a “first inventor to invent” system to a “first inventor to file” system.
What else is going through the patent reform pipeline?
Tell us more about this subject matter eligibility issue.
Do you think there will be any new patent reform signed into law to address that issue?
What exactly is a patent troll?
So a non-practicing entity that sues another entity for patent infringement is a patent troll?
Can’t someone being sued by a patent troll raise a defense that the other company is bullying it into paying money?
So what is patent reform’s role in this situation?
To hear Keith’s answers, click on https://soundcloud.com/podcastdetroit/m2techcast-episode-45-young-basille-trolls
Schonberger is an associate in Young Basile’s Troy office. Schonberger concentrates his practice on patent prosecution in the software field, namely, in the areas of data processing, video coding, user interface, and mobile technologies. He provides strategic counseling to inventors in prosecuting patent applications before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by conducting patentability searches, drafting provisional, non-provisional, and PCT/national stage applications and responding to office actions. Schonberger practices in other areas of intellectual property law as well, including clearance studies, due diligence analyses and litigation support. He works with large, global organizations as well as high-growth companies.
To contact him directly, click on http://www.youngbasile.com/keithschonberger.html
