Special to ag-IP-news Agency
NEW YORK - Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) Executive Director, Dan Ravicher, will testify on Thursday before the US House of Representatives on the subject of patent reform.
Ravicher will begin with an opening statement and then answer questions from representatives on the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property (IP), including Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) and Ranking Member Howard Coble (R-NC), at the oversight hearing on "American Innovation at Risk: The Case for Patent Reform".
"The interests of the non-patent holding public are almost always absent from any meaningful participation in decision making about the patent system, despite the fact that they bear the brunt of its burdens," Ravicher stated in written testimony submitted as part of his testimony at the hearing.
Patent reform has been a topic of extensive discussion in Washington the past few years, with both the House and Senate introducing bills and holding hearings on the subject.
Many of the most frequently discussed proposals aim to improve patent quality, such as by limiting the ability of patent applicants to file unlimited numbers of continuation applications and by creating a post-grant opposition procedure allowing the public to more efficiently challenge the validity of issued patents.
In his written testimony, Ravicher commented on these specific proposals and also raised several other ways in which the patent system should be reformed.
