The legislation the committee is considering would require recipients of abusive demand letters — which assert vague or unclear patents on widely used processes or technologies in order to extract “licensing” fees from businesses — to show that the patent troll sent the letter in “bad faith.” “This is a very difficult standard to meet and would make the transparency requirements virtually unenforceable,” the groups said.
Meanwhile, they wrote, the bill would preempt and nullify more “constructive” state laws, but “[i]t does not make sense to do this and then put in place a weaker and ineffective federal standard,” the groups added.