C4IP Co-Chairs and former USPTO Directors Andrei Iancu and David Kappos recently published an opinion piece in Fortune about how Big Tech firms have weaponized the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to steal smaller companies’ patents — and how the PREVAIL Act would solve this.
Since the creation of the PTAB in 2011, Big Tech firms have attacked smaller companies by filing ceaseless legal challenges with the PTAB so that startups are forced to waste resources and time repeatedly defending their patents. But as Iancu and Kappos explain, the bipartisan PREVAIL Act would reform the PTAB by banning duplicative litigation in this tribunal court and in federal court, too.
They also debunk the idea that the PREVAIL Act would drive up drug prices, pointing out that the PTAB rarely sees cases related to pharmaceutical patents — and that strong and defensible patents benefit consumers by catalyzing high-tech innovation and empowering small firms to compete.
“Startups and small firms are often at the forefront of developing [innovative] technologies, but they’ll never succeed if corporate behemoths can plunder their ideas and bully them with repetitive litigation when they fight back,” Iancu and Kappos assert. “PREVAIL would create a level playing field where small businesses have a fighting chance against established industry giants.”