Free for a Fee

“I don’t think we felt like we had a choice but to take action on the issue of patent trolls,” said Obama economic adviser Gene Sperling at today’s event. “What we were seeing wasn’t a trend upward [in patent threats], it was a hockey stick.”

Sperling expressed hope that patents could be a “sweet spot” for bipartisan compromise and that a bill would make it to the president’s desk. The Innovation Act, which includes fee-shifting and customer protection measures for patent lawsuits, has passed the House and is being debated in the Senate.