Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Hewlett-Packard associate general counsel Paul Roeder confirmed in an email that the ITC Working Group seeks to clamp down on trolls, or nonpracticing entitie (NPEs) at the ITC. In fact, Roeder’s email to CorpCounsel was written on behalf of himself and HP, not the ITCWG. Roeder wrote in that email that “HP is not taking the position that nonpracticing entities should be excluded from the ITC. As I said in my response to Mr. Cassidy, licensing entities should be able to obtain an exclusion order provided they’ve engaged in ex ante licensing that has established a domestic industry in articles protected by the patent, and provided that an exclusion order is in the public interest. And for those licensing entities that cannot meet these requirements, District Court is available to provide a reasonable royalty.”
Journalists tasked with following patent news could easily have missed an interesting development on February 15. That day, eight leading tech companies quietly disclosed that they’ve formed a new lobbying group dedicated to keeping so-called “patent trolls”—entities that use patents to litigate, rather than innovate—out of the International Trade Commission (ITC), which has become a red-hot forum for patent disputes because it can hand down import bans.
Thankfully, Bernard Cassidy, the general counsel of Tessera, Inc. (a Silicon Valley company that develops semiconductor technology) was around to spread the news in a blog post later in the month. His piece set off a war of words with a top lawyer at Hewlett-Packard and led to a wider online debate about patent rights at the ITC.
According to a recent congressional filing pursuant to the Lobbying Disclosure Act, eight companies—HP; Apple, Inc.; Google, Inc.; Intel Corporation; Oracle Corporation; Cisco Systems, Inc.; Broadcom Corporation; and Avaya, Inc.—recently formed an organization called the ITC Working Group and tapped lobbyists at the Franklin Square Group for the project.
The ITCWG didn’t state its goals in the filing, but an anonymous source told Politico that it seeks to “address the growing problem of nonpracticing entities (NPEs) litigating patent cases at the [ITC].” Hewlett-Packard associate general counsel Paul Roeder has penned a series of articles that, while not written on behalf of the Working Group, seems to confirm that its members intend to ramp up the fight against certain types of NPEs.
