Big tech lobbying against PERA now

[(Annelise, Reporter for Bloomberg Law.) “Big Tech, Retailers Ask Senators to Kill Patent Eligibility Bill.”, Bloomberg Law, 3-11-24, https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/big-tech-retailers-ask-senators-to-kill-patent-eligibility-bill]//LR

Groups representing Alphabet Inc.‘s Google, Amazon.com Inc., and other large tech and retail companies sent a letter pleading with Senate Judiciary leaders to vote against a bill they say will turn the US patent system upside down and cripple innovative businesses. The proposed Patent Eligibility Restoration Act, or PERA, would overrule over a century of legal principles and allow the patenting of much of daily life, according to a letter sent Monday to Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and ranking member Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) by industry groups. Signatories included the High Tech Innovators Alliance, Electronic Frontier Foundation, National Retail Federation, and others. The bill takes aim at a test established in 2014 by the US Supreme Court in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International that limits what qualifies for patent protection. The current system mostly excludes inventions covering natural phenomena, laws of nature, or abstract ideas. That framework has led to “unpredictable business outcomes” and “threatens to unseat the United States as the world’s innovation leader,” said the bill’s author Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) at a January hearing. The proposal would prohibit patent protection for several set categories, including a “mathematical formula” or “mental process.” But it would make “any process that cannot be practically performed without the use of a machine” or a “manufacture” eligible. “Any business method, legal agreement, media content, or even games and entertainment could be patented so long as the invention required some use of computers or electronic communications,” the letter alleged. This would cause “crippling litigation” against innovative technology companies, manufacturers, and main street businesses, it said. The groups cited court decisions invalidating patents that were asserted against hundreds of companies, saying such ineligible patents would exist under PERA and inflict damage on the US economy. Other limitations on patentabiity, like obviousness, aren’t enough to prevent bad patents, according to the letter. “It would be a mistake to assume that other statutory provisions would play the same role if Congress were to neuter” the existing patent-eligibility inquiry.