The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade...

The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission should “take prompt action against abusive patent trolls,” the American Antitrust Institute said Thursday in letters to the agencies. AAI urged DOJ to reopen its investigations into large patent portfolio transfers to Rockstar and Conversant Intellectual Property Management, two patent assertion entities AAI referred to as “trolls.” The two PAEs have used those patent portfolios to launch “an aggressive patent enforcement campaign” against Google at its competitors’ behests, AAI said. DOJ and FTC should also urge standards-setting organizations to adopt AAI-proposed patent policies that would “diminish the ability of patent trolls and others to enforce patents essential to technical standards -- such as 4G and Blu-Ray -- in an anticompetitive manner,” AAI said. The group said the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act (S-1720), which the Senate Judiciary Committee is considering, would empower the FTC to take action against PAEs that send out deceptive demand letters. “More transparent patent enforcement would encourage defensive measures by users and manufacturers of high-tech products and discourage offensive misuses of patents by trolls,” AAI said (http://bit.ly/LFlejp).