The SHIELD Act was reintroduced in the House of Representatives this week, and a post in The Hill's Technology Blog cited Alexander Poltorak's criticism of the bill as being unnecessary and unfair to patent owners. ("Bill would force 'patent trolls' to pay legal costs" TheHill.com - February 27, 2013)
The SHIELD Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at curtailing the litigious activities of so-called patent trolls, has been reintroduced in the House of Representatives. An article on TechCrunch quotes Alexander Poltorak's argument that the SHIELD Act is based on an overestimation of the number of frivolous lawsuits, and that the bill might make patent owners less likely to enforce their patents against infringers.
February 20, 2013 - The patent lawsuit between agriculture giant Monsanto and Vernon Hugh Bowman, a 75-year-old soybean farmer, seems to be going Monsanto's way as both the liberal and conservative justices apparently agree with Monsanto.
"Why in the world would anybody spend any money to try to improve the seed if as soon as they sold the first one anybody could grow more and have as many of those seeds as they want?" asked Chief Justice John Roberts.
Well, at least business is booming somewhere: The plaintiff-friendly federal courts in the Eastern District of Texas saw a dramatic jump in the number of patent lawsuits filed, from 607 in 2011 to 1,263 in 2012 - a 108 percent increase in just a year.
February 14, 2013 - In a Google+ Hangout session, President Obama acknowledged that recent patent reform legislation - while sweeping - didn't go far enough to stop "patent trolls" and in fact "only went about halfway to where we need to go."
"[Patent trolls] are a classic example. They don't actually produce anything themselves," Obama said. "They're just trying to essentially leverage and hijack somebody else's idea and see if they can extort some money out of them."
Ryogen Portfolio of 23 Issued Patents Cover Genes Associated with Several Cancers, Diabetes, Obesity, Pancreatitis, Hepatitis, Lupus, Asthma, Hypertension and Alzheimer’s Disease
Suffern, NY – February 12, 2013 – Ryogen LLC, a genomic research and development company focusing on genes implicated in clinical diseases, had a very fruitful year in 2012, further developing its Intellectual Property portfolio. In 2012, Ryogen was awarded nine new patents, bringing the total number of issued U.S. Patents to 23 with 18 patent applications pending approval at the U.S. Patent Office.