by Ken Stanwood & Dennis Duchene 
June 26, 2017

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In the 114th Congress, H.R.2045 Targeting Rogue and Opaque Letters Act of 2015 was proposed to address this issue. Despite the clich acronym created by its name, this bill and its Senate counterpart S.632 STRONG Patents Act of 2015 are good proposals and would go a long ways towards eliminating or reducing a large number of actions argued to be the hallmark of bad actors in patent enforcement. They provide no requirements that patents owners shouldn’t already be prepared to do when enforcing legitimate infringement claims. Importantly, they would provide uniformity and certainty across all venues. The newly introduced STRONGER Patent Act retains the demand letter reform and expands pro-patent modifications to the AIA. We strongly recommend Congress support this bill.

In their recent TC Heartland decision, SCOTUS created unequal protection against patent infringers based on geographical incorporation decisions. They added uncertainty in time, cost, and outcome in patent litigation. Standardized local rules and demand letter reform at the federal level would help mitigate this unfortunate situation.
http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/06/26/tc-heartland-requires-standardized-local-rules-demand-letter-reform/id=85097/

-Ken Stanwood is CTO of WiLAN, Inc., and is active in government affairs and university technology transfer. Mr. Stanwood transitioned into his role of CTO after having served as President and CEO of WiLAN Labs, the research and development arm of WiLAN, Inc. WiLAN Labs focused on developing solutions to fundamental issues facing next generation wireless communications and cloud computing. Mr. Stanwood has extensive experience in Broadband Wireless technology development including protocol and algorithm development, intellectual property, and standardization. He has been in the communications industry for over 30 years. He helped found the WiMAX Forum, was vice-chair of IEEE 802.16 and was the first technical working group chair of the WiMAX Forum. He holds more than 130 US patents.

-Dennis Duchene holds the position of VP, Senior IP Counsel at WiLAN, Inc., and is active there in patent prosecution, acquisitions, licensing and enforcement. Mr. Duchene has over 20 years of experience as an intellectual property lawyer, and has significant experience in various technology fields including wireless communication, medical devices, social networks, software, aerospace, networking, cloud computing, semiconductors, memory, imaging and displays. Mr. Duchene was previously a partner at McDermott Will & Emery before joining WiLAN in 2013.