The anti-patent-troll bill passed by the US House of Representatives last year appears to have stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) promised that a vote would come shortly after the April recess, but it keeps getting delayed.

The delays are causing real concern among supporters. Yesterday, the Coalition for Patent Fairness sent a letter to Leahy and ranking Republican Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), urging them to forge ahead and keep the bill's key provisions intact.

The debate over this problem, however, isn't confined to Washington. The whole reason "patent trolls" became a hot topic on the Hill is because the trolls' aggressiveness reached an unprecedented level. Instead of just going after settlements from the usual big tech companies, trolls invaded Main Street, seeking license fees from small businesses for simply offering Wi-Fi or using scanners.

As states kicked off their legislative sessions this winter, lawmakers responded to the threats against small businesses by writing bills that would ban "bad faith patent assertions" as a violation of consumer-protection laws. The bills target a specific type of patent troll: the kind that sends out vaguely worded letters demanding licensing fees. The thousands of letters sent out by the "scanner trolls" at MPHJ Technology are often brought up as a case-in-point.

The new laws allow trolls that break rules around letter-writing to be sued in state court, either by private companies they've approached for licensing fees, or by state authorities themselves.

Other well-known trolls that have used demand letters include Lodsys, which seeks license fees from iOS developers, and Personal Audio, which is seeking to enforce a set of patents it says cover podcasts.

A total of 27 states have considered such bills, with ten of those states already having passed anti-patent-troll laws. In five other states, bills have passed the legislature and are awaiting a governor's signature. In 12 states, the bills are still in the legislative process.

That data has been gathered together by the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which is lobbying in favor of the anti-troll bill. They've put together a map showing the state of the anti-patent-troll bills in each state:

CCIA's Patent Progress website has an interactive version of the map, with links to each state's bill.

Limited powers

In general, most patent trolling behavior can't be regulated by states at all. Patents are granted by the federal government, and patent disputes are resolved by federal courts.

The new bills will give states some authority over patent trolls that have demand letters as a key part of their strategy. The bills typically allow state courts to consider a variety of factors in deciding what is a "bad faith" patent assertion. Patent owners who don't disclose the ownership of their patents, or show that they haven't investigated the target's alleged infringement at all, are more likely to be considered to be using their patents in "bad faith."

States can't do much to change the rules around patent trolls that actually file federal lawsuits, which is still the backbone of the patent-trolling industry. In fact, successfully enforcing patents through lawsuits is a factor in the state bills that weighs against a finding of "bad faith patent assertion."

Limited state power over patent rights is one reason Attorneys General in 42 states have asked Congress to pass patent reform, writing in a February letter that "dubious claims... are now levied at all manner of businesses, including banks, hospitals, restaurants and hotels."

Adding together states that are passing new laws or have signed on to the AG letter, all but four states "openly support some kind of action against patent trolls," notes CCIA's Matt Levy, who published his research on state actions earlier this week.

In the near future, it's possible that a majority of states may pass bills banning some of the most disliked patent troll strategies. But these bills won't be able to have a big impact on the landscape in and of themselves. They are a sign of the times, however, and an important marker of how awareness of the issue is building.

When tech companies were pushing for patent reform to crack down on trolls back in 2007, they were portrayed, often successfully, as one industry seeking special privileges. That portrayal won't work this time around. This is the year that state lawmakers from Bangor to Boise have learned about just what "patent trolls" mean to their constituents. They are, predictably, not pleased.