We were so close to stopping patent trolls. The House passed a strong bill, and the President was ready to sign it… then the Senate stepped in and decided not to act.



The fight isn't over. We'll continue to urge our elected officials to fix our broken patent system. Many universities have sided with trial lawyers and the pharmaceutical lobby in fighting against patent reform, so it's up to students and researchers to show Congress that the future of innovation relies on a world without patent trolls. And to get there, we need strong changes.

Dear Chairman Leahy and Ranking Member Grassley:

We undersigned write to urge you to support common-sense patent reform. It has come to our attention that over 100 universities, including many of our own, have joined up alongside PhRMA and companies like Monsanto in speaking out against much needed reform of our broken patent system.

Their position is severely flawed. We—as university researchers, students, and innovators—are entering into an environment ridden with the threat of abusive entitles like patent trolls and costly, unnecessary litigation. This ecosystem discourages the realization of new ideas and inventions.

Universities are supposed to be places where scholars and students have access to the resources to imagine and design technologies that keep America on the cutting edge. The current patent system, overrun with abusive patent trolls, is antithetical to what universities and the patent system aim to foster: inventiveness and the proliferation of new ideas. Under today’s conditions, students' and researchers' pursuits will be chilled by the knowledge that their efforts will be consistently under threat, too costly to pursue.

The listed universities claim that many of the bill’s provisions “assume that every patent holder is a patent troll.” This simply is not true. Proposed reform language carefully ensures that valid patent holders are not affected, and the proposals' transparency requirements help to serve both the public and the future of American innovation.

Patent trolls cost the country more than $29 billion per year. Though universities directly participate in only a fraction of cases, they have regularly licensed their technologies to patent trolls. For example, at least sixty American universities have sold patents to Intellectual Ventures, one of the most notorious patent assertion entities. Inventions that originate in our schools, largely funded by public tax dollars, are being abused by companies that do not comport with the missions of our universities nor the progress of innovation.

We call on our Senators to support sound policy and pick up where the House of Representative left off—with strong legislation that tackles the patent troll problem. We were dismayed to see the letter from academic institutions calling for further delay in fixing our broken patent system.

Now is the time to support the future of American innovation and pass meaningful reform.