Used Patents: A Potentially Deadly Part of Your Portfolio

In Conquering Innovation Fatigue, we explain how “Patent Pain” is one of the external innovation fatigue factors that can slow down innovation. This factor includes actions by courts and lawmakers that add to the difficulty and expense of protecting intellectual property rights. A new aspect of this problem is the recent explosion in risk to patent holders–particularly the holders of “used” patents (patents directed to products that the patent holder markets). This risk stems from a recent Federal Circuit decision, Forest Group, Inc. v Bon Tool Company (link is to the PDF file of the Dec. 28, 2009 decision). The controversial aspect of this decision is that it suddenly changes the way the law has been applied in a way that could severely punish patent holders for what might be an innocent mistake.

The law provides a penalty of up to $500 per offense for false patent marking–inappropriately marking a product with a patent number such as one that has expired. It can be an act of intentional fraud or, in many cases, a simple mistake. That $500 penalty per offense has long been interpreted as $500 per continuous false marking act, not as $500 for every falsely marked product. All that changed a few months ago, thanks to the Federal Circuit Court’s decision. Now if you sell a billion packages of diapers and one of the patents listed happens to have expired a few months ago (oops, clerical error!), you could be sued and face up to $500 billion in penalties. Even if reduced to a mere, say, $50 million, it’s extremely dangerous for a corporation. Naturally, this has drawn in swarms of lawyers and looks like it could create a whole new cottage industry based on sucking capital out of the veins of those who actually use the patents they obtain. Patent holders are rushing to check their patent markings more carefully and to redo packaging (an expensive process, unfortunately) to ensure that expired patents are taken off.

The social harm of listing an expired patent on a product seems virtually negligible. A competitor interested in copying the product will naturally look up the patent and determine if the claims might be a barrier, and in this process can readily see whether it has expired. Yes, it’s a form of false advertising, but not because a real patent wasn’t obtained, only because it eventually expired and the marking wasn’t updated yet. Not as serious as making up a bogus patent number and listing that for honor never earned. $500 for a continuous act of false marking may seem too light a punishment (the law was written back when $500 was worth something), but up to $500 per product strikes me as ridiculous and threatens to only further penalize and discourage producers and innovators.

Here’s hoping that Congress will correct the abusive application of the law by the Federal Circuit and make owning a used patent less dangerous.

Related story from the Wall Street Journal: “New Breed of Patent Claim Bedevils Product Makers” by Dionne Searcey. This story discusses a more recent ruling that overturned a decision saying an attorney suing Brooks Brothers for expired patents had no legal standing to sue. Now lawyers everywhere can join in the feeding frenzy.

Update, Sept. 3: One of my favorite IP strategists asked what constructive steps we could be taking to help clients deal with this threat, apart from diligently checking every marking. Tough question. What if products were marked with codes—could be simple six-character strings that you plug into tinyrul.com or some other website–to bring up a page with the current patents applicable to a product? The page could be automated so it is tied in to patent databases so that only current patents are displayed, and/or status information was displayed for the patent. Thus, if a product does have a patent associated with it when packaging is designed, instead of listing the patent number(s), why not list something like: “For related patents, see PatentMarking.com/14Zq2”.

Could this indirect approach fully meet the demands of patent marking and provide sufficient notice? Perhaps not without a tweak of the law, but I’d be happy to see an electronic solution.

When I gave the example with PatentMarking.com, I hadn’t yet checked out that URL and was just throwing out what sounded like a good domain name for such a tool. Turns out that OceanTomo owns it and is using it for a related purpose. Cool! Glad to see that they are advocating online marking of patents.

So why not print each product or its packaging with a code that links the product to a website for automatically updated information, with disclaimers and means for flagging corrections to reduce corporate liability if something goes wrong with the automated process? Could this help reduce the future threat of patent marking sharks trying to shake down companies for millions of dollars for innocent and hard-to-eliminate marking errors?

Another update: Greg Aharonian‘s latest PATNEWS newsletter mentions the WSJ article, rejects the outrageous notion that false marking of patents is a serious evil, and contends that Congress should make these lawsuits illegal that seek to shake down companies for millions due to a marking mistake. May that happen swiftly! Thanks, Greg.