The Small Business Technology Council sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner and other House leadership members voicing our support for the proposed “Targeting Rogue and Opaque Letters Act of 2014” aka the “TROL Act” This bill is designed to combat patent trolls: companies that assert patent rights and and litigate or attempt to collect licencing fees for intellectual property used by other companies, but do not have any intention of producing the products or services that the patent protects. The TROL Act strikes a proper balance between protecting inventors and legitimate patent owners enforcing their patents using good faith, patent-related communications, while narrowly targeting fraudulent demand letters that have been the source of the entire troll issue. To read our letter to the House, as well as the legislative discussion draft of the TROL Act, click on the links below:
SBTC Letter of Support to House regarding TROL Act
This legislation is a much better alternative for small business inventors than the HR 3309, which passed the House earlier this year and has since been stalled in the Senate. That bill went much too far in removing patent protections to attack patent trolls, while putting unreasonable financial burdons on small business inventors. To read more about HR 3309 and our reasons for opposing it, click here: