Good news for Apple and other firms who are continually beset by patent trolls, as the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a 2011 law designed to make it easier to defend against new patent trolls is legal.
The case before the Supreme Court focused on a patent held by Cuozzo Speed Technologies LLC that claims an invention for alerting drivers when they are speeding. GPS technology company Garmin brought a challenge at the Patent Office, which invalidated the Cuozzo patent after concluding its claims weren’t innovative when viewed against other prior technologies.
Apple revealed a few years back that it was the number one target for patent trolls. The company noted that while it rarely lost a patent case on merits, it often chose to simply settle a case, as it was cheaper to do so than to defend them.
The 2011 law created procedures to make it cheaper and easier to contest patents in front of the Patent Office, in place of a federal judge. Apple, Google, and a number of other firms have taken advantage of the new procedures in order to challenge the validity of patents they believe made weak claims to new technology.
SCOTUS heard evidence that the accelerated 2011 process had so far resulted in over 80% of those patents that were challenged being declared invalid.
