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RAPAPORT... The National Retail Federation (NRF) and lawmakers urged retail victims of frivolous patent assertion lawsuits to weigh in with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) by March 15, 2013. (Read details and file comments at the Federal Register here.) These lawsuits have been brought against retailers, software makers and others by what has been coined ''patent trolls,'' or entities that purchase broad and obscure patents for items they did not invent, with the intent to sue for use of technology that may only vaguely fall under the patent's description, the NRF explained. ''The truth is, patent trolls are causing significant headaches for retailers because they often file claims that are so exorbitant it’s cheaper to settle rather than litigate,'' wrote the NRF's senior director of government relations, Beth Provenzano. The NRF said the average cost of fighting a patent troll is about $2 million and can drag on for 18 months, leading most retailers to give up and settle. Claims have included activities as mundane as ''adding an item to an online shopping cart'' and ''checking out,'' or a retailer’s mobile app linking to their website, scanning a document to PDF and then emailing the file. In one example, more than 40 online retailers who included a website link to their own privacy policies on smartphone apps were targeted by a California company claiming to hold a patent on that linking practice, the NRF found. Congressmen Peter DeFazio (Democrat-Oregon) and Jason Chaffetz (Republican-Utah) introduced HR 6245, the Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes (SHIELD) Act, this week to protect companies from these frivolous lawsuits. The SHIELD Act places the financial burden on patent trolls by allowing the defendants to recoup money spent on defending themselves. DeFazio said, “Patent trolls don’t create new technology and they don’t create American jobs. They pad their pockets by buying patents on products they didn’t create and then suing the innovators who did the hard work and created the product. These egregious lawsuits hurt American innovation and small technology start ups, and they cost jobs. My legislation would force patent trolls to take financial responsibility for their frivolous lawsuits.”
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