This Thursday, the House of Representatives will vote on the Innovation Act -- the best bill yet that aims to remedy the growing patent trolling problem. We cannot wait to enact meaningful patent reform, and this is our opportunity. We need you to call your Congressional Representative to urge a yes vote on this bill. In conjunction with EFF and several other partner organizations, we’ve launched a site where you can easily call or tweet at your Representative to urge them to vote for reform: https://trollingeffects.org/call
Patent trolls are non-productive entities that use lawsuits and other intimidation methods to shake down inventors, small companies, and startups. The growing burden presented by these bad actors has motivated thousands of concerned individuals, companies, and organizations to join us in support of this bill, and in enacting reform as soon as possible.
Last week, we sent two letters to Congress in support of patent reform -- one signed by investors including Mark Cuban, Hunter Walk, and Brad Feld, and the other from patent holders and inventors. The prominent engineers and entrepreneurs who signed the letter include Evan Williams, Twitter co-founder; Dustin Moskovitz, Facebook co-founder; Ranganathan Krishnan, former Principal Engineer at Qualcomm; and Paul Sutter, Quantcast co-founder.
But in addition to fierce support from within the tech world, this bill and what it stands for has also gathered the backing of organizations such as the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Newspaper Association of America, and the U.S. Travel Association among others.
The breadth and depth of the coalition in support of patent reform is worth noting, and we hope Congress pays attention and takes action.
We need to change the narrative of the patent troll story and better spend the time and capital we are losing on creating jobs and pursuing innovation.
Help us fix a broken system. Call now and then tell your friends to speak out on this important issue by posting to your social networking accounts:
I just asked my representative to fight patent trolls and support the #InnovationAct. Have you? https://trollingeffects.org/call
We can be a part of this change. Join in.
