CNN Quotes Pratik Shah on Non-Practicing Entity Cases Before SCOTUS
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CNNMoney published the article “Supreme Court may endorse fee-shifting in frivolous patent suits,” which covers two cases currently before the U.S. Supreme Court that relate to non-practicing entities, popularly known as “patent trolls”—companies that hold patents and charge fees from their use rather than make or sell products themselves. The cases—Octane Fitness v. ICON Health & Fitness and Highmark Inc. v. Allcare Health Management Systems—involve instances in which a federal judge may order a plaintiff to pay attorney’s fees for the defendant if the suit brought is frivolous.
The article notes that, for Octane Fitness, Pratik Shah, Akin Gump’s Supreme Court practice head, wrote a brief on behalf of Fortune 500 companies such as 3M, GE, Procter & Gamble, and Johnson & Johnson that states, “non-practicing patentees…routinely play critically productive roles in fostering innovation and creating economic growth in this country through the invention, pre-commercial development, and licensing of their intellectual property rights to others who are better positioned to commercialize their technical breakthroughs."
