On behalf of the members of the Quality Patents Coalition (QPC) we are writing to express our strong opposition to two bills which have been noticed for markup at an upcoming Executive Business Committee meeting: S. 2220, The "PREVAIL Act" and S. 2140, the "Patent Eligibility Restoration Act." The QPC is organized around the principles of enhanced patent quality through improved application examination and access to meaningful post-grant review proceedings. Unfortunately, these bills undermine each of those principles by unwinding the critical and carefully balanced policy created by the America Invents Act and significantly weakening standards for patent eligibility.
The combined effect of the Patent Eligibility Reform Act (PERA) and PREVAIL Act would be to open the flood gates of low-quality patents and leave the technology developers and end-users in cases involving these patents without the opportunity to avail themselves of the Inter Partes Review (IPR) process, which was created by Congress as a less costly and less time-consuming alternative to district court litigation. This would mark a return to the years following the 1998 State Street decision, when low-quality business method patents were issued by the hundreds unleashing over a decade of frivolous patent litigation involving low-quality business method patents.
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