Here are four things you can do to prevent the Patent Reform Act of 2009 from becoming law and weakening the U.S. patent system.

1. Join American Innovators for Patent Reform: Membership is FREE for a limited period. By joining, and expanding our membership, you give AIPR additional credibility. Also, the more members we have, the more voices we can mobilize when we need to have an impact, such as when legislation comes before a committee or up for a vote.

2. Write Your Congressmen: You can write to the two Senators from your state and your U.S. Representative. To find their addresses, go to www.congress.org, and enter your zip code at the top of the page. It will return to you the names of the two Senators from your state and your Representative. Click on the Contact tab for each, and you will get their DC office addresses and telephone and fax numbers. We offer a sample letter you can download and then cut-and-paste into an e-mail, fax or conventional letter.

Download: Sample letter to send to your Senator or Representative

3. Write to the Members of the House Judiciary Committee: The House of Representatives has not yet considered this bill, so it is important that we educate every member of the House Judiciary Committee about this ill-conceived legislation. Use the same letter from No. 2, and write to each member of the House Judiciary Committee. Their names and address are in this file.

Download: House Judiciary Committee Members Contact List

4. Co-Sign Our Letter: Enter your name, your company name, if applicable, and your e-mail address in the boxes provided. We will add your name when we send this letter to every member of Congress. Co-signing our letter will be very helpful, but it does not replace Nos. 2 and 3. An individual letter from you, plus your signature on our letter, will have a double impact!

Re: H.R. 1260
Dear Representative:
We are writing to you to raise our concerns regarding, and to express our opposition to, H.R. 1260, the “Patent Reform Act of 2009.”

This bill does not serve the interests of your constituency or the American People. According to a study commissioned by Small Business Administration, roughly 40% of American jobs are created by small businesses. Approximately the same percentage of patents is issued every year to independent inventors and small businesses – the true American innovators. Small and independent inventors form the backbone of the American economy; yet, the pending legislation favors large businesses (and only those in the information technology industry) and is distinctly anti-inventor and anti-entrepreneur. Some of the more egregious changes proposed in this bill include:

• The apportionment of damages provision of the bill not only chips away at the economic value of patents, but cuts to the heart of what a patent is – the right to exclude others from making, using and selling the patented invention. If an infringer sells a patented product, the infringer must pay damages to the patent owner. If only nominal damages may be assessed against an infringer, then what is to discourage patent infringement? An attempt to dramatically diminish patent damages devalues all issued and future patents and makes patents not only worthless but, indeed, meaningless!
• Raising the bar for a finding of willful infringement only encourages litigiousness since an infringer will be no worse at the end of lawsuit – win or lose – than at the beginning. Why would any infringer settle an infringement lawsuit or take a license before being sued?
• The proposed “post-grant opposition,” imported from European patent regimes, will allow infringers to easily and endlessly challenge the validity of issued patents, thereby forcing inventors to spend money until they are forced to abandon their patent rights.
• The proposed limitation on the venue where a patent lawsuit may be filed seeks to further erode inventors’ abilities to enforce their patent rights.
• Change from the traditional American First-to-Invent system to European-style First-to-File regime will lead to a race to the patent office favor large corporation − with their armies of in-house attorneys ready to pounce − over small and independent inventors and.

Our Founding Fathers gave the Congress a constitutional mandate to “promote the progress of science…” This Congress, if it passes this bill, will do the opposite. A patent is the only incentive for an inventor to disclose an invention to the public, rather than keeping the invention as a trade secret. This bill will take this incentive away. As had been the case for centuries, companies and independent inventors will choose to rely on trade secrets in place of patent protection. This will discourage the exchange of information and stifle innovation, leading generation after generation to reinvent the wheel, rather than building on the previous generation’s innovations.

Our uniquely American first-to-invent system is deeply rooted in the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress the power to grant exclusive right to inventors, not the winners of the race to the Patent Office. If replaced by the European first-to-file system, as proposed by the current Bill, it will favor large corporations with in-house patent attorneys, always at the ready to write a patent application. Independent inventors, scrambling to find money to hire an attorney, will be left in the dust. It will also hurt the quality of patent applications; instead of experimenting to refine the invention and looking for the “best mode” to practice it, inventors will race to the Patent Office with half-baked ideas.

Emasculated by the loss of their technology transfer revenues, universities will be forced to lay off scientists involved in fundamental research. Science and higher education will suffer.

The pending Patent Reform Act of 2009, alternatively referred to as the “Patent Deform Act of 2009” or the “Patent Repeal Act of 2009” will:

• Betray independent inventors, the backbone of American ingenuity;
• Undermine the ability of small companies to compete against large corporations, as well as the ability of American businesses to compete with foreign companies;
• Undercut domestic industry and open the floodgates to pirated products from offshore;
• Significantly damage the US economy at large and ultimately have devastating consequences for American competitiveness in the global economy;
• Damage universities, research laboratories and small R&D companies, which all derive significant revenues from licensing their patents;
• Destabilize pharmaceutical companies and destroy the biotech industry that lives and dies by its patents, which eventually will lead to a drying up of the pipeline of new drugs and diagnostic tools;
• Dry up venture capital for start ups, the future of our economy.

In the interest of American inventors, researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs and the American people as a whole, we urge you to vote against this bill.