FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Sarah Elliott – Sarah@AppAlliance.org
App Developers Alliance Calls for the Senate to Pass Patent Reform Bill
Critical Reforms Needed to Protect Startups and App Developers from Patent Trolls
Washington, D.C. (June 4, 2015) –The Application Developers Alliance thanked the Senate Judiciary Committee for moving the PATENT Act a significant step closer to enactment today.
“We appreciate the hard work of Judiciary Committee leaders and cosponsors on this important bill that will protect America’s job creators and our economy from patent trolls,” said Jon Potter, President of the App Developers Alliance. “Abusive patent trolls are a tax on innovation and a threat to small businesses. The PATENT Act will substantially improve today’s imbalance in litigation burdens and is a good step toward diminishing abusive patent demand letters – it is a critical investment in our future.”
The Apps Alliance particularly supports provisions in the PATENT Act that will protect small innovators and entrepreneurs.
- The legislation would curb frivolous and abusive litigation by forcing trolls to think twice before filing a lawsuit.
- The bill’s customer stay provision would protect small businesses and consumers while manufacturers litigate infringement claims associated with products.
We are concerned, however, that the bill’s once-robust demand letter provision may be weakened by Senator Feinstein’s amendment to prohibit specific dollar amounts in patent claimants’ initial demand letters. The Alliance supports more, not less, specificity in every demand letter sent, so that recipients can more quickly determine the validity of the claim and the asserting party’s credibility.
More information is available here.
###
The Apps Alliance is a non-profit global membership organization that supports developers as creators, innovators, and entrepreneurs. We promote app industry growth and advocate on behalf of our members on public policy and industry issues. The Apps Alliance serves more than 36,000 individual members and more than 200 companies, including app publishers, platforms, wireless carriers, hardware manufacturers, ad networks, enterprise tools and service providers.
