Association for Competitive Technology executive director Morgan Reed issued the following statement regarding today’s White House executive actions addressing patent quality.
Action is clearly needed to address the problem of patent trolls. Thankfully the White House has responded to the requests of tech innovators to improve patent quality at the beginning of the process. Improvements in the way that applications are reviewed will help prevent bad patents from being awarded and used against small companies. This makes more sense than trying to fix a broken system at the end of the process to favor big companies and litigation at the expense of startups and innovation. ACT has long advocated for improvements in patent quality — and opposed measures like CBM expansion — because entrepreneurs should spend more time innovating and less time litigating.