CTA, SIIA, HTIA Urge Congress to Uphold PTO Fee Setting Authority

Reps. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, and Hank Johnson, D-Ga., introduced legislation Tuesday that would maintain Patent and Trademark Office fee-setting authority. In exchange, PTO would implement modern IT systems and big-data analytics. CTA CEO Gary Shapiro urged Congress to protect “critical” PTO programs like inter partes review (IPR) from “special interest attacks” and applauded the bill’s introduction. The bill drew cheers from Software & Information Industry Association Senior Vice President-Public Policy Mark MacCarthy. PTO Director Andrei Iancu told the House Judiciary Committee during a hearing Tuesday that since enactment of the America Invents Act, fee setting authority allowed the agency to operate more efficiently and recoup necessary costs. He suggested the committee work with the PTO to maintain that authority. Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said the committee’s efforts to “deter patent trolling” through the America Invents Act “have been a resounding success.” The legislation and the recent court decisions “deprived patent trolls of many of the weapons they use to extort payments from innocent companies,” he said. The High Tech Inventors Alliance urged the committee to uphold the America Invents Act, the IPR process and precedents established by recent patent-related Supreme Court cases. IPR is working as Congress intended by allowing the PTO to fully assess patents and correct mistakes without litigation, HTIA General Counsel John Thorne said: “This vital mechanism along with recent unanimous Supreme Court rulings, such as the Alice decision (see 1804180073), apply to invalid patents that never should have been issued in the first place and are the primary fuel for abuse of the patent system.”