There is nearly universal agreement that reform of the U.S. patent system is urgently needed. But patent reform has many elements, with just as many players lined up on various sides of the debate: pharmaceutical companies versus high-tech, big corporations versus small inventors. Some want to preserve strong patent rights, while others maintain such rights weaken, rather than foster, innovation. For some, speed and transparency are key. For others, it is capping damages, or the creation of specialized patent courts to deal with highly technical areas of science and the law.
There is one area on which the various sides can readily agree, however: Venue shopping in patent cases is rampant, with plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions rendering verdicts that are outsized to the point of being perverse. It is axiomatic that where you bring a patent case should bear some relationship to the invention and the inventors, and not simply be based on where the plaintiff is most likely to find success. Unlike other areas of patent reform, this is not an issue of patent holder’s rights, and it is not about stifling innovation. It is about justice — and whether a skewed system of adjudicating patent claims can lead to wildly inconsistent results that ultimately damage the U.S. patent system as a whole.
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