Industry and activists will backlash and pressure Congress over the plan.

A coalition of tech companies, retailers and tech activist groups lined up on Monday in opposition to the latest legislative effort to limit patent invalidation in the courts, warning that unseating legal precedents over eligibility would lead to a coming “wave of crippling litigation.”

Called the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2023, the law would create new boundaries for when a patent can be invalidated under Section 101 of the Patent Act that would wipe away a decade of judicial decisions on eligibility that attorneys often say are unpredictable. The industry groups, joined also by more activist-bent advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the center-right think tank the R Street Institute, painted a grim picture of a world with more patent rights.

“PERA would turn the U.S. patent system upside down, severing patent rights from their historic mooring to improvements in technology. PERA would lead to a wave of crippling litigation,” they claimed Monday. Representatives for U.S. Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Chris Coons, D-Del., ranking member and chair, respectively, of the intellectual property subcommittee who are backing the bill, did not immediately comment on the letter Monday, though Will Baskin-Gerwitz, a Coons spokesman noted that “it’s technically [Tillis’] bill.” In a later email, Baskin-Gerwitz called the proposed patent reforms the “best and only path forward” after Supreme Court rulings have “narrowed the types of inventions eligible for U.S. patents,” including some that are “eligible for patent protection in Europe and China.”