When I had first heard about patent trolls, I thought that it was some kind of sick joke. But recent coverage on The Majority Report and WTF with Marc Maron have informed me that they are real, and someone who claims to own the idea of podcasting has been suing popular podcasts. This is an outrageous abuse of the system. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has created a web page where you can contact your elected officials and ask them to support The Shield Act.

The SHIELD Act spears patent trolls’ incentives right through the heart: if a patent troll sues someone, they better believe that the defendant actually infringes a valid patent. If not, the troll could be on the hook for the winning party’s full litigation costs, which often stretch into the millions of dollars.

This “fee shifting” system would empower innovators to fight back, while discouraging trolls from threatening lawsuits to start.

Please visit the Electronic Frontier foundation website today to email your Congressional Representative and Senators about this issue. If you are feeling ambitious, print out the sample email and send it to them via snail mail as well!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 7th, 2013 at 6:00 am and is filed under Editorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.