LES Statement On Tillis-Coons Proposal For Patent Eligibility Reform

Bill Would Restore Certainty, and Revitalize Incentives for Innovation

RESTON, VIRGINIA—June 5, 2019—The Licensing Executives Society (U.S.A. and Canada), Inc. commends Senators Tillis and Coons, and Representatives Collins, Johnson, and Stivers, in their proposed language for a bill to reform Section 101 of the Patent Act. This is sensible reform that will improve our patent system and further encourage innovation.

This draft legislation is an important step forward in restoring certainty to our patent system. The innovative American spirit has been supported and encouraged by a patent system designed and implemented to reward inventors by affording them an exclusive right to their inventions. A system that affords predictable and reliable legal protections to a vast array of products and processes improves the human condition, encourages the devotion of time and talent to their creation, and attracts investment in new industries and businesses.

Recently, the law of patent eligibility has been altered by judicial decisions confusing distinct legal principles of what constitutes the act of invention with what field of endeavor should be eligible for protection. Throughout much of its history, the U.S. patent system used patent eligibility as a crude filter merely to ensure that patent protection was properly limited by the Constitutional mandate to promote the progress of useful arts. As such, useful inventions were the touchstone of patent eligibility. Other sections of the law dealt with the merits of the particular claimed invention. The confusion of those distinct legal principles caused our patent system to suffer from increased uncertainty and diminished reliance, and our economy suffered from a corresponding reduction in investment.

Judicial decisions are necessarily ad hoc, born of specific facts giving rise to peculiar disputes. Precedent is a poor vehicle for policy. Congress is right to resume its rightful role in setting our nation’s patent policy by reiterating and restoring the traditional notion of patent eligibility as a broad and inclusive concept. In so doing, and in giving it the force and effect of law, Congress would further encourage innovation in wide-ranging and diverse fields of endeavor thereby bringing new products and processes into being for the benefit of all of humanity.