Legal Research on the Abuse of Patent Litigation and the Defensive Measures for the Japanese and Taiwanese IT Industry

The patent assertion entity (PAE) which known as “the world, particularly severe impact in the US Specifically, in 2013, the report entitled “Patent Assertion and US Innovation” issued by the National Economic Council and Council of Economic Advisers of the US clearly reflected the significant harm of patent assertion toward the economic development of the country. Moreover, the Congress of the United States planned to reconsider the Innovation Act for combating PAEs at the beginning of May. The ongoing discussion in the Congress implies that analyzing the 2015 proposed Innovation Act is important for finding appropriate solutions to solve the remaining problem regarding the abuse of patent litigation in the US, specifically, Patent Trolling activity costs the US economy billions of dollars per year. The IT industry is the main target of patent trollers, briefly, due to the standard for considering the eligibility criteria for a software patent is still weak. Admittedly, many legal scholars believe that the proposed bill will be the significant tool for solving the abuse of patent litigation. For this reason, this research will analyze the major provisions in the proposed bill. Additionally, related cases in the US also will be addressed in this research, for instance, the case between Octane Fitness, LLC and ICON Health & Fitness, Inc. which will be discussed herein. This paper will define the concept of the patent assertion or patent troll and examine the relationship with IT industry. The paper will then clarify the significant role of the Innovation Act 2015 in the patent assertion. Further, this thesis will compare the major provisions of the Innovation Bill 2015 by separating into five main issues with the regulatory framework in Japan and Taiwan, study the rules which were laid down in the landmark cases to understand the court interpretation and propose the suggestion for selected countries to address aforementioned problem. In other words, an analysis of the Patent Assertion Entities situation in Japan and Taiwan will be conducted focusing on the regulatory framework for preventing patent troll and its activities because Japanese and Taiwanese IT Industry normally be targeted by foreign patent trollers. This situation led to the defensive measures issued by the Japanese and Taiwanese government which will be addressed in this paper. A comparative study of the Innovation bill and the domestic laws of Taiwan, Japan, and related factors will be analyzed herein.