As we all know, one of the scourges of our industry is the Non-Practicing Entity (NPE) better known as the patent troll. Given that by definition NPEs don’t produce anything except lawsuits, their activities are deeply corrupting of a system that was designed to protect those who do.
One of the few effective ways that companies—especially small companies—have of protecting themselves is the Inter Partes Review (IPR) that provides a quicker, cheaper way of challenging bad patents. The patent trolls hate it, of course, and now the Patent Office is proposing to change the rules to make IPRs useless.
The EFF has an excellent post that explains the issues and what you can do to help. What you can do is to file a comment with the Patent Office opposing this rule change. The EFF’s post has a sample comment that you can personalize to make your feelings known. The PTO is trying to rush this through for some reason so comments close on 2 December 2025. Therefore, it’s important that you act quickly. The EFF post has a link for you to file the comment so the whole thing should take only a minute or two.
If you live in the US, please take the time to make your feeling about the ploy known. As I said, it will only take a minute or two.