When the boy wizard Harry Potter and his pals encountered a fearsome mountain troll in the movie “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” it took toughness, teamwork, and some timely magic to knock out the ugly beast with his own club. For years, many had called for Congress to employ a similar approach to address so-called “patent trolls,” which have cost innovators an estimated $500 billion dollars in settlement and defense costs in the past 10 years alone.
Last fall, in a bipartisan update of the U.S. patent system, these innovators may have had that wish granted. The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) was signed into law by the president in September, its most significant change to the patent landscape being a transition from a system of “first-to-invent” to a system of “first-to-file.” However the AIA also brought an important and immediate end to the practice of naming dozens if not scores of disparate defendants in one suit — a patent troll’s favorite weapon. Though perhaps neither supernatural nor spectacular, Congress may have effectively disarmed those whom many consider a scourge to innovation through its own unique power: the amendment of the joinder rules.
