The issue of Patent Trolls is now tackled at the highest level with, early June 2013, a White House communication on how it expects to address the issue of impediments to technology due to these nefarious actors: ” The White House issued five executive actions and seven legislative recommendations designed to protect innovators from frivolous litigation and ensure the highest-quality patents in our system“.
This comes in the general action to try to phase-out patent trolls (see our previous post on How Intellectual Property is Changing – Too Slowly but in the Right Direction). Now a number of comments on these executive orders from the White House imply that they are too weak and will not be efficient to curb the patent troll development. See for example this post on Quartz: “Why patent trolls will laugh in the face of the US government’s weak attempts to fight them“.
This issue of excessive patenting and undue burden on the economy will certainly remain very high on the agenda for the next few weeks and months. Let’s continue to observe how this institution will need to transform to deal with the changes of the Fourth Revolution!
