Tuesday, September 21, 2004

A New Hope for Patent Reform

Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, and two public interest organizations, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge, filed a friend-of-the-court brief today with the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, DC, arguing that ambiguous patent claims should be invalidated and that claim terms should be interpreted as narrowly as possible by the courts to protect the public. Currently, courts uphold patent claims unless they are deemed too ambiguous, and the courts interpret vague claim terms as broadly as possible. These rules often result in improper patents of uncertain scope and lead to overzealous threat letters and lawsuits brought by patentees that chill innovation and deter beneficial competition.

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