In June 2013, the President of the U.S.A. Barack Obama announced measures to limit the phenomenon of “patent trolling”, which is the use of patents for the sole purpose of restricting competition and to obtain money through legal action or through agreements following threats of such actions. Yesterday came the announcement of the opening of a section of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website, which is the organism that handles patents, containing information useful for anyone who has been accused of violating someone else’s patents.

The intention of President Obama was to reform patent laws to limit the abuse that leads to them used only to get money from other companies and not to create a product to sell. Worse, the privatization of patents sometimes makes it difficult to understand who is the real owner. A company can license its patents to other companies, which use them only to sue other companies or at least threaten to sue them for alleged violations of some of those patents.

Some of the largest companies in the world use their patents to attack their competitors. Inevitably, they put pressure on the U.S. Congress to ensure that things remain the same. In fact, President Obama has failed to implement the proposals he made in June 2013 and yesterday’s announcement concern only some limited measures.

The new section of the USPTO website probably makes a more symbolic than substantial point. If a company is being accused of patent infringement, it must consult a lawyer, possibly with specific expertise on the subject. The lawyer is supposed to not need the information put on that new section.

The White House also announced other initiatives. The first is the “Crowdsourcing Prior Art”, a program that aims to involve companies, experts and even common people to help those who must examine the patents to trace previous art. That’s because a patent must concern an original invention and can be invalidated if a prior art is found.

The second initiative concerns an improvement in the training of the technical staff of the USPTO. The patent trolling problem has become very strong in the field of technology, which is advancing at remarkable speeds. It’s therefore more than ever necessary that the staff that must approve a patent application is up to date. This initiative invites technologists, engineers and other experts to offer volunteer help for these updates.

The third initiative invites patent lawyers to offer their services pro bono to inventors who can’t afford to pay for their defense if they’re accused of patent infringement. This is supposed to help to discourage one of the dirtiest strategies of large companies against small competitors.

Honestly those are not very substantial changes and we must hope that there are many people of good will who will respond to the call from the White House. Patent trolls are parasites which limit progress costing billions of dollars that can’t be used for development. It will take more to fight them seriously, let’s hope that this is just the beginning.

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