PTAB is a disaster
Paul Morinville 2024 (Paul Morinville is the Founder and former President of US Inventor, Inc., which is an inventor organization in Washington D.C. that advocates strong patent protection for inventors and startups ex-executive at multiple technology startups including computer hardware, enterprise middleware and video compression software in the U.S. and China, and now medical devices, May 31 2024, "Corporate Lobbyists Pushing Harmful Laws On Genuine Inventors", https://innovationgadfly.com/corporate-lobbyists-pushing-harmful-laws-on-genuine-inventors/)//rohan
The America Invents Act of 2011 (AIA), the worst disaster to ever befall U.S. innovation, created the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) inside the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The USPTO grants a patent, and the PTAB invalidates the same patent at the request of the huge corporations that stole the invention. It does this in a proceeding significantly biased toward the infringer without a jury and without due process.
Former USPTO Director Michelle Lee, who was previously the Vice President of Patent Strategy at Google, weaponized the PTAB to invalidate 84% of the patents it fully adjudicates. No subsequent USPTO Director has corrected the PTAB’s innovation-destroying kill rate.
To pass the AIA, the corporate lobby conjured up a cartoon character called a patent troll that they said was destroying U.S. innovation. The corporate lobbyists spent tens of millions of dollars filling the Congressional airwaves with their cartoonish false narrative and then showered IP Subcommittee members with millions of dollars to pass the AIA.
But to get it passed, they needed inventors to get behind it. For that role, they found a patented inventor named Louis Foreman. Foreman is the CEO of Enventys, a product development and prototyping company, and Inventor’s Digest, a magazine for inventors. Foreman was also on the board of the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO), an IP trade organization representing large corporations.
The corporate lobby elevated Foreman to be perceived as the universal spokesman for the inventor community, making him a regular panelist at corporate lobbying events and parading him through Congress.
In exchange for this notoriety, Foreman collected signatures supporting the AIA at the National Hardware Show and published many articles supporting the AIA in Inventor’s Digest. All the while, the corporate lobby advertised in his magazine, and their PR engines drove favorable coverage for his companies, thereby helping Foreman attract new business from inventors.
With the corporate lobbying machine hitting on all cylinders, Foreman was making a tidy profit and significantly growing his companies.
When off-committee members asked their favorite member on the IP Subcommittee how to vote, they were given the entire corporate lobbying package, including Foreman’s seemingly credible support.
Nobody questioned Foreman’s motives or those of the corporate lobbyists who pushed him to the front. Instead, members took Foreman at face value.
[Foreman second from the left at the signing of the AIA]
That corporate lobbyist ruse is how the AIA was passed, thereby creating the PTAB and destroying U.S. innovation.