SHIELD Act May Be a Double-Edged Sword

Two U.S. congressmen, Representative Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. and Representative Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, introduced legislation (HR 6245, the Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes Act, or SHIELD Act), in the U.S. House of Representatives on August 1. The SHIELD Act seeks to dissuade nonpracticing entity patent owners (“NPEs,” or sometimes derogatorily called “patent trolls”) from filing patent infringement lawsuits that do “not have a reasonable likelihood of succeeding” against computer hardware and software companies by awarding costs and attorney fees to the accused infringer. To keep reading, download the full article below.