Touted as the most extensive revision of the patent law since 1952, the America Invents Act of 2011 was signed by the president on September 16. You might think, in light of the celebration and rhetoric, that the Act was tackling the big problems such as patent trolls,...

The Great Patent Bubble of 2011

I recently wrote about the $4.5 billion auction for Nortel's portfolio of 6,000 patents that went to a consortium that included Apple, Microsoft, and RIM (Blackberry) -- three of four smartphone platforms. In the wake of this sale, Interdigital has contemplated monetizing its portfolio...

The Nortel Auction

On June 30, the results of the Nortel bankruptcy auction were announced. A consortium of Apple, Microsoft, RIM (Blackberry), Ericsson, Sony and EMC put up $4.5 billion to acquire Nortel's remaining portfolio of 6,000 patents.

This is not a story about patents motivating invention, or licenses...

On June 9, the Supreme Court decided Microsoft v. i4i, upholding the Federal Circuit's rule that "clear and convincing evidence" is needed to invalidate patents in court. A preponderance of the evidence, the usual standard in civil cases, is not enough. Yet the patent examiner cannot be summoned to testify,...

Monday June 28 was the day the U.S. Supreme Court was to decide the patent case of the century, Bilski v. Kappos, and bring clarity to the debacle of the 1998 State Street Bank decision. In State Street, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (which hears all patent...

Last week Microsoft roiled the world by filing a patent infringement suit against TomTom, a Dutch maker of GPS devices. Microsoft's shares are trading at an 11-year low and is in the news for laying off workers, but Microsoft still has $20 billion in cash on hand, a good and...

Patent attorneys like to argue that the U.S. patent system is the envy of the world, the "gold standard" by which all others are judged. While this may be the view of other patent attorneys around the world, policymakers have viewed the U.S. patent system with growing skepticism after the...

It's hard to compete for attention with the drama of the big bailout and this presidential race. But bubbles are news, at least when they burst. The patent bubble hasn't burst, but judging by last week's Wall Street Journal story on Intellectual Ventures, it's getting pretty big.

The brainchild of...

Two recent developments show sides of the patent system not normally exposed to public view.

The first was ignored by the media: A firm called Channel Intelligence has sued 17 small websites, including three owned by individuals, for infringing a broad patent on user-generated lists. Almost ignored, except that...

Yesterday, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the Court of Appeals for Federal Circuit in Quanta v. LG. Electronics. This was a technical case about the power of patent holders to extract fees from downstream component assemblers, systems integrators, vendors, and end users. Value chains run deep and wide in information...

Forget the inter-sector warfare over patent reform that is presently stalled in the Senate. Today a bigger battle is underway in court over where to draw the line between patentable ideas and abstract ideas. The case, In re Bilski, is being heard by the Court of Appeals for the Federal...

by Brian Kahin, Senior Fellow, Computer & Communications Industry Association

In 2004, Brandeis economist Adam Jaffe and Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner published Innovation and its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It - a rare book on patents...