In the wake of President Barack Obama's pledge last month to battle "patent trolls"—also known as patent assertion entities—intellectual property lawyers in Washington, D.C., met Friday to train a spotlight on his targets.
Speaking at a barbecue lunch on Capitol Hill hosted by the Law and Economics Center at the George Mason University School of Law, representatives of the Federal Trade Commission, Johnson & Johnson Services Inc., and Hogan Lovells made it clear that their beef is with non-practicing entities (NPEs) that only exist to acquire and license patents but do not produce anything, not universities and some individual inventors. Philip Johnson, senior vice president and chief IP counsel at Johnson & Johnson Services, said the crosshairs should be on NPEs that threaten to sue the customers of alleged patent infringers and ask for settlements or licensing fees.
"If we do that, then the reasonableness of the remedies that Congress might end up adopting will be much better in their targeting and applied only to those people who deserve to have it so applied," said Johnson, who also represents The Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform, an alliance of about 50 companies that advocates on patent policy.
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