President Obama Proposes Measures to Curb Lawsuits by Patent Trolls

“When the executive (White House), legislative (pending congressional bills) and judicial (New York Times op-ed and recent Federal Circuit decisions) branches of the United States are all aligned, something substantial will happen. The concern should be on how it, whatever 'it' is, will be applied,” Atkins said.

According to Atkins, large technology companies and manufacturers have been frustrated by the costly lawsuits from holding companies and are pushing politicians to act.

“Companies are saying, ‘I'm spending millions of dollars fighting off these trolls and it's a bunch of contingency lawyers who are filing the suits,’” Atkins commented. “The reason patent trolls file suit is because they know it will be expensive to defend. Some of the [proposed] solutions revolve around trying to make it less expensive to defend or place greater risk [on plaintiffs].”

Discussing a particular executive order requiring companies to identify the ultimate parent entity of the patent, Atkins commented, “It’s about making the real party-in-interest come forward, seeing who’s really behind the curtain like in the Wizard of Oz. It is a deterrent to see the roadmap of the many companies that are formed.”

Atkins said the order could cause pain for patent trolls in the form of negative press and retaliatory lawsuits directly against the true patent owners, who may have set up the holding companies precisely to keep their main business out of messy lawsuits.