Washington, D.C. – Today, at a Capitol Hill panel discussing patent reform legislation, Apps Alliance member David Bloom shared the story of his Techstars-funded company being crushed by a patent troll.
“Yesterday my company, OrdrX, shut down. I enjoyed five extraordinary years as an innovator and a job-creator, but during those years I spent as much money defending against patent trolls as I paid myself in salary. OrdrX had early fundraising and business success, but then patent trolls and the patent system put us on a treadmill to nowhere, and we finally collapsed,” said Bloom.
Unfortunately, the OrdrX story is far too common. Nearly one-third of our nation’s startups receive patent assertion demand letters, and patent troll abuse costs US companies as much as $29 billion annually.
Bloom added, “Congress has a responsibility to protect our job-creators and economy from unethical patent trolls by passing patent reform legislation. Congress must help America’s innovators fight back.”
The Application Developers Alliance supports legislative reforms that undermine the patent troll business model without harming legitimate patent enforcement. The Alliance supports policies that short-circuit frivolous litigation, address the imbalance in litigation burdens, and ensure transparency and specificity in demand letters and complaints.
More information is available at TrollFighter.com.
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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.
