Wednesday, September 18, 2013

The State War Against Patent Trolls

Increasingly, states within the United States have been taking up cudgels against what are variously known as non-practicing entities ("NPEs"), patent assertion entities ("PAE"), and patent trolls.  The anti-patent troll bandwagon has now rolled into the Great Plains.  The attorney general of Nebraska, Republican Jon Bruning has now thrown down the gauntlet, as reported in an article entitled "Nebraska’s attorney general has declared war on patent trolls," published on September 12, 2013, in the Washington Post.  As in other states, one of the legal grounds for opposing patent troll activities in Nebraska is the state unfair competition law.  As state action against patent trolls gather speed, fewer and fewer bridges may remain under which trolls may hide.