Archives For PAE

Acknowledging the Limitations of the FTC’s “PAE” Study

Adam Mossoff — 4 May 2016

[Below is an excellent essay by Devlin Hartline that was first posted at the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property blog last week, and I’m sharing it here.]

ACKNOWLEDGING THE LIMITATIONS OF THE FTC’S “PAE” STUDY

By Devlin Hartline

The FTC’s long-awaited case study of patent assertion entities (PAEs) is expected to be released this spring. Using its subpoena power under Section 6(b) to gather information from a handful of firms, the study promises us a glimpse at their inner workings. But while the results may be interesting, they’ll also be too narrow to support any informed policy changes. And you don’t have to take my word for it—the FTC admits as much. In one submission to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which ultimately decided whether the study should move forward, the FTC acknowledges that its findings “will not be generalizable to the universe of all PAE activity.” In another submission to the OMB, the FTC recognizes that “the case study should be viewed as descriptive and probative for future studies seeking to explore the relationships between organizational form and assertion behavior.”

However, this doesn’t mean that no one will use the study to advocate for drastic changes to the patent system. Even before the study’s release, many people—including some FTC Commissioners themselves—have already jumped to conclusions when it comes to PAEs, arguing that they are a drag on innovation and competition. Yet these same people say that we need this study because there’s no good empirical data analyzing the systemic costs and benefits of PAEs. They can’t have it both ways. The uproar about PAEs is emblematic of the broader movement that advocates for the next big change to the patent system before we’ve even seen how the last one panned out. In this environment, it’s unlikely that the FTC and other critics will responsibly acknowledge that the study simply cannot give us an accurate assessment of the bigger picture.

Limitations of the FTC Study

Many scholars have written about the study’s fundamental limitations. As statistician Fritz Scheuren points out, there are two kinds of studies: exploratory and confirmatory. An exploratory study is a starting point that asks general questions in order to generate testable hypotheses, while a confirmatory study is then used to test the validity of those hypotheses. The FTC study, with its open-ended questions to a handful of firms, is a classic exploratory study. At best, the study will generate answers that could help researchers begin to form theories and design another round of questions for further research. Scheuren notes that while the “FTC study may well be useful at generating exploratory data with respect to PAE activity,” it “is not designed to confirm supportable subject matter conclusions.”

One significant constraint with the FTC study is that the sample size is small—only twenty-five PAEs—and the control group is even smaller—a mixture of fifteen manufacturers and non-practicing entities (NPEs) in the wireless chipset industry. Scheuren reasons that there “is also the risk of non-representative sampling and potential selection bias due to the fact that the universe of PAEs is largely unknown and likely quite diverse.” And the fact that the control group comes from one narrow industry further prevents any generalization of the results. Scheuren concludes that the FTC study “may result in potentially valuable information worthy of further study,” but that it is “not designed in a way as to support public policy decisions.”

Professor Michael Risch questions the FTC’s entire approach: “If the FTC is going to the trouble of doing a study, why not get it done right the first time and a) sample a larger number of manufacturers, in b) a more diverse area of manufacturing, and c) get identical information?” He points out that the FTC won’t be well-positioned to draw conclusions because the control group is not even being asked the same questions as the PAEs. Risch concludes that “any report risks looking like so many others: a static look at an industry with no benchmark to compare it to.” Professor Kristen Osenga echoes these same sentiments and notes that “the study has been shaped in a way that will simply add fuel to the anti–‘patent troll’ fire without providing any data that would explain the best way to fix the real problems in the patent field today.”

Osenga further argues that the study is flawed since the FTC’s definition of PAEs perpetuates the myth that patent licensing firms are all the same. The reality is that many different types of businesses fall under the “PAE” umbrella, and it makes no sense to impute the actions of a small subset to the entire group when making policy recommendations. Moreover, Osenga questions the FTC’s “shortsighted viewpoint” of the potential benefits of PAEs, and she doubts how the “impact on innovation and competition” will be ascertainable given the questions being asked. Anne Layne-Farrar expresses similar doubts about the conclusions that can be drawn from the FTC study since only licensors are being surveyed. She posits that it “cannot generate a full dataset for understanding the conduct of the parties in patent license negotiation or the reasons for the failure of negotiations.”

Layne-Farrar concludes that the FTC study “can point us in fruitful directions for further inquiry and may offer context for interpreting quantitative studies of PAE litigation, but should not be used to justify any policy changes.” Consistent with the FTC’s own admissions of the study’s limitations, this is the real bottom line of what we should expect. The study will have no predictive power because it only looks at how a small sample of firms affect a few other players within the patent ecosystem. It does not quantify how that activity ultimately affects innovation and competition—the very information needed to support policy recommendations. The FTC study is not intended to produce the sort of compelling statistical data that can be extrapolated to the larger universe of firms.

FTC Commissioners Put Cart Before Horse

The FTC has a history of bias against PAEs, as demonstrated in its 2011 report that skeptically questioned the “uncertain benefits” of PAEs while assuming their “detrimental effects” in undermining innovation. That report recommended special remedy rules for PAEs, even as the FTC acknowledged the lack of objective evidence of systemic failure and the difficulty of distinguishing “patent transactions that harm innovation from those that promote it.” With its new study, the FTC concedes to the OMB that much is still not known about PAEs and that the findings will be preliminary and non-generalizable. However, this hasn’t prevented some Commissioners from putting the cart before the horse with PAEs.

In fact, the very call for the FTC to institute the PAE study started with its conclusion. In her 2013 speech suggesting the study, FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez recognized that “we still have only snapshots of the costs and benefits of PAE activity” and that “we will need to learn a lot more” in order “to see the full competitive picture.” While acknowledging the vast potential benefits of PAEs in rewarding invention, benefiting competition and consumers, reducing enforcement hurdles, increasing liquidity, encouraging venture capital investment, and funding R&D, she nevertheless concluded that “PAEs exploit underlying problems in the patent system to the detriment of innovation and consumers.” And despite the admitted lack of data, Ramirez stressed “the critical importance of continuing the effort on patent reform to limit the costs associated with some types of PAE activity.”

This position is duplicitous: If the costs and benefits of PAEs are still unknown, what justifies Ramirez’s rushed call for immediate action? While benefits have to be weighed against costs, it’s clear that she’s already jumped to the conclusion that the costs outweigh the benefits. In another speech a few months later, Ramirez noted that the “troubling stories” about PAEs “don’t tell us much about the competitive costs and benefits of PAE activity.” Despite this admission, Ramirez called for “a much broader response to flaws in the patent system that fuel inefficient behavior by PAEs.” And while Ramirez said that understanding “the PAE business model will inform the policy dialogue,” she stated that “it will not change the pressing need for additional progress on patent reform.”

Likewise, in an early 2014 speech, Commissioner Julie Brill ignored the study’s inherent limitations and exploratory nature. She predicted that the study “will provide a fuller and more accurate picture of PAE activity” that “will be put to good use by Congress and others who examine closely the activities of PAEs.” Remarkably, Brill stated that “the FTC and other law enforcement agencies” should not “wait on the results of the 6(b) study before undertaking enforcement actions against PAE activity that crosses the line.” Even without the study’s results, she thought that “reforms to the patent system are clearly warranted.” In Brill’s view, the study would only be useful for determining whether “additional reforms are warranted” to curb the activities of PAEs.

It appears that these Commissioners have already decided—in the absence of any reliable data on the systemic effects of PAE activity—that drastic changes to the patent system are necessary. Given their clear bias in this area, there is little hope that they will acknowledge the deep limitations of the study once it is released.

Commentators Jump the Gun

Unsurprisingly, many supporters of the study have filed comments with the FTC arguing that the study is needed to fill the huge void in empirical data on the costs and benefits associated with PAEs. Some even simultaneously argue that the costs of PAEs far outweigh the benefits, suggesting that they have already jumped to their conclusion and just want the data to back it up. Despite the study’s serious limitations, these commentators appear primed to use it to justify their foregone policy recommendations.

For example, the Consumer Electronics Association applauded “the FTC’s efforts to assess the anticompetitive harms that PAEs cause on our economy as a whole,” and it argued that the study “will illuminate the many dimensions of PAEs’ conduct in a way that no other entity is capable.” At the same time, it stated that “completion of this FTC study should not stay or halt other actions by the administrative, legislative or judicial branches to address this serious issue.” The Internet Commerce Coalition stressed the importance of the study of “PAE activity in order to shed light on its effects on competition and innovation,” and it admitted that without the information, “the debate in this area cannot be empirically based.” Nonetheless, it presupposed that the study will uncover “hidden conduct of and abuses by PAEs” and that “it will still be important to reform the law in this area.”

Engine Advocacy admitted that “there is very little broad empirical data about the structure and conduct of patent assertion entities, and their effect on the economy.” It then argued that PAE activity “harms innovators, consumers, startups and the broader economy.” The Coalition for Patent Fairness called on the study “to contribute to the understanding of policymakers and the public” concerning PAEs, which it claimed “impose enormous costs on U.S. innovators, manufacturers, service providers, and, increasingly, consumers and end-users.” And to those suggesting “the potentially beneficial role of PAEs in the patent market,” it stressed that “reform be guided by the principle that the patent system is intended to incentivize and reward innovation,” not “rent-seeking” PAEs that are “exploiting problems.”

The joint comments of Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation, & Engine Advocacyemphasized the fact that information about PAEs “currently remains limited” and that what is “publicly known largely consists of lawsuits filed in court and anecdotal information.” Despite admitting that “broad empirical data often remains lacking,” the groups also suggested that the study “does not mean that legislative efforts should be stalled” since “the harms of PAE activity are well known and already amenable to legislative reform.” In fact, they contended not only that “a problem exists,” but that there’s even “reason to believe the scope is even larger than what has already been reported.”

Given this pervasive and unfounded bias against PAEs, there’s little hope that these and other critics will acknowledge the study’s serious limitations. Instead, it’s far more likely that they will point to the study as concrete evidence that even more sweeping changes to the patent system are in order.

Conclusion

While the FTC study may generate interesting information about a handful of firms, it won’t tell us much about how PAEs affect competition and innovation in general. The study is simply not designed to do this. It instead is a fact-finding mission, the results of which could guide future missions. Such empirical research can be valuable, but it’s very important to recognize the limited utility of the information being collected. And it’s crucial not to draw policy conclusions from it. Unfortunately, if the comments of some of the Commissioners and supporters of the study are any indication, many critics have already made up their minds about the net effects of PAEs, and they will likely use the study to perpetuate the biased anti-patent fervor that has captured so much attention in recent years.

GAO Report on Patent Litigation Confirms No “Patent Troll” Litigation Problem

Adam Mossoff — 17 December 2013

This was previously posted to the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property Blog on October 4, and given that Congress is rushing headlong into enacting legislation to respond to an alleged crisis over “patent trolls,” it bears reposting if only to show that Congress is ignoring its own experts in the Government Accountability Office who officially reported this past August that there’s no basis for this legislative stampede.

As previously reported, there are serious concerns with the studies asserting that a “patent litigation explosion” has been caused by patent licensing companies (so-called non-practicing entities (“NPEs”) or “patent trolls”). These seemingly alarming studies (see here and here) have drawn scholarly criticism for their use of proprietary, secret data collected from companies like RPX and Patent Freedom – companies whose business models are predicated on defending against patent licensing companies. In addition to raising serious questions about self-selection and other biases in the data underlying these studies, the RPX and Patent Freedom data sets to this day remain secret and are unknown and unverifiable. Thus, it is impossible to apply the standard scientific and academic norm that all studies make available data for confirmation of the results via independently produced studies. We have long suggested that it was time to step back from such self-selecting “statistics” based on secret data and nonobjective rhetoric in the patent policy debates.

At long last, an important and positive step has been taken in this regard. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a report on patent litigation, entitled “Intellectual Property: Assessing Factors that Affect Patent Infringement Litigation Could Help Improve Patent Quality,” (“the GAO Report”), which was mandated by § 34 of the America Invents Act (AIA). The GAO Report offers an important step in the right direction in beginning a more constructive, fact-based discussion about litigation over patented innovation.

The GAO is an independent, non-partisan agency under Congress. As stated in its report, it was tasked by the AIA to undertake this study in response to “concerns that patent infringement litigation by NPEs is increasing and that this litigation, in some cases, has imposed high costs on firms that are actually developing and manufacturing products, especially in the software and technology sectors.” Far from affirming such concerns, the GAO Report concludes that no such NPE litigation problem exists.

In its study of patent litigation in the United States, the GAO primarily utilized data obtained from Lex Machina, a firm specialized in collecting and analyzing IP litigation data. To describe what is known about the volume and characteristics of recent patent litigation activity, the GAO utilized data provided by Lex Machina for all patent infringement lawsuits between 2000 and 2011. Additionally, Lex Machina also selected a sample of 500 lawsuits – 100 per year from 2007 to 2011 – to allow estimated percentages with a margin of error of no more than plus or minus 5% points over all these years and no more than plus or minus 10% points for any particular year. From this data set, the GAO extrapolated its conclusion that current concerns expressed about patent licensing companies were misplaced.

Interestingly, the methodology employed by the GAO stands in stark contrast to the prior studies based on secret, proprietary data from RPX and Patent Freedom. The GAO Report explicitly recognized that these prior studies were fundamentally flawed given that they relied on “nonrandom, nongeneralizable” data sets from private companies (GAO Report, p. 26). In other words, even setting aside the previously reported concerns of self-selection bias and nonobjective rhetoric, it is inappropriate to draw statistical inferences from such sample data sets to the state of patent litigation in the United States as a whole. In contrast, the sample of 500 lawsuits selected by Lex Machina for the GAO study is truly random and generalizable (and its data is publicly available and testable by independent scholars).

Indeed, the most interesting results in the GAO Report concern its conclusions from the publicly accessible Lex Machina data about the volume and characteristics of patent litigation today. The GAO Report finds that between 1991 and 2011, applications for all types of patents increased, with the total number of applications doubling across the same period (GAO Report, p.12, Fig. 1). Yet, the GAO Report finds that over the same period of time, the rate of patent infringement lawsuits did not similarly increase. Instead, the GAO reports that “[f]rom 2000 to 2011, about 29,000 patent infringement lawsuits were filed in the U.S. district courts” and that the number of these lawsuits filed per year fluctuated only slightly until 2011 (GAO Report, p. 14). The GAO Report also finds that in 2011 about 900 more lawsuits were filed than the average number of lawsuits in each of the four previous years, which an increase of about 31%, but it attributes this to the AIA’s prohibition on joinder of multiple defendants in a single patent infringement lawsuit that went into effect in 2011 (GAO Report, p. 14). We also discussed the causal effect of the AIA joinder rules on the recent increase in patent litigation here and here.

The GAO Report next explores the correlation between the volume of patent infringement lawsuits filed and the litigants who brought those suits. Utilizing the data obtained from Lex Machina, the GAO observed that from 2007 to 2011 manufacturing companies and related entities brought approximately 68% of all patent infringement lawsuits, while patent aggregating and licensing companies brought only 19% of such lawsuits. (The remaining 13% of lawsuits were brought by individual inventors, universities, and a number of entities the GAO was unable to verify.) The GAO Report acknowledged that lawsuits brought by patent licensing companies increased in 2011 (24%), but it found that this increase is not statistically significant. (GAO Report, pp. 17-18)

The GAO also found that the lawsuits filed by manufacturers and patent licensing companies settled or likely settled at similar rates (GAO Report, p. 25). Again, this contradicts widely asserted claims today that patent licensing companies bring patent infringement lawsuits solely for purposes of only nuisance settlements (implying that manufacturers litigate patents to trial at a higher rate than patent licensing companies).

In sum, the GAO Report reveals that the conventional wisdom today about a so-called “patent troll litigation explosion” is unsupported by the facts (see also here and here). Manufacturers – i.e., producers of products based upon patented innovation – bring the vast majority of patent infringement lawsuits, and that these lawsuits have similar characteristics as those brought by patent licensing companies.

The GAO Report shines an important spotlight on a fundamental flaw in the current policy debates about patent licensing companies (the so-called “NPEs” or “patent trolls”). Commentators, scholars and congresspersons pushing for legislative revisions to patent litigation to address a so-called “patent troll problem” have relied on overheated rhetoric and purported “studies” that simply do not hold up to empirical scrutiny. While mere repetition of unsupported and untenable claims makes such claims conventional wisdom (and thus “truth” in the minds of policymakers and the public), it is still no substitute for a sensible policy discussion based on empirically sound data.

This is particularly important given that the outcry against patent licensing companies continues to sweep the popular media and is spurring Congress and the President to propose substantial legislative and regulatory revisions to the patent system. With the future of innovation at stake, it is not crazy to ask that before we make radical, systemic changes to the patent system that we have validly established empirical evidence that such revisions are in fact necessary or at least would do more good than harm. The GAO Report reminds us all that we have not yet reached this minimum requirement for sound, sensible policymaking.

Adam Mossoff’s Senate Testimony on PAEs, Demand Letters and Patent Litigation

Adam Mossoff — 15 November 2013

Below is the text of my oral testimony to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, the Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance Subcommittee, at its November 7, 2013 hearing on “Demand Letters and Consumer Protection: Examining Deceptive Practices by Patent Assertion Entities.” Information on the hearing is here, including an archived webcast of the hearing. My much longer and more indepth written testimony is here.

Please note that I am incorrectly identified on the hearing website as speaking on behalf of the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property (CPIP). In fact, I was invited to testify soley in my personal capacity as a Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law, given my academic research into the history of the patent system and the role of licensing and commercialization in the distribution of patented innovation. I spoke for neither George Mason University nor CPIP, and thus I am solely responsible for the content of my research and remarks.

Chairman McCaskill, Ranking Member Heller, and Members of the Subcommittee:

Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you today.

There certainly are bad actors, deceptive demand letters, and frivolous litigation in the patent system. The important question, though, is whether there is a systemic problem requiring further systemic revisions to the patent system. There is no answer to this question, and this is the case for three reasons.

Harm to Innovation

First, the calls to rush to enact systemic revisions to the patent system are being made without established evidence there is in fact systemic harm to innovation, let alone any harm to the consumers that Section 5 authorizes the FTC to protect. As the Government Accountability Office found in its August 2013 report on patent litigation, the frequently-cited studies claiming harms are actually “nonrandom and nongeneralizable,” which means they are unscientific and unreliable.

These anecdotal reports and unreliable studies do not prove there is a systemic problem requiring a systemic revision to patent licensing practices.

Of even greater concern is that the many changes to the patent system Congress is considering, incl. extending the FTC’s authority over demand letters, would impose serious costs on real innovators and thus do actual harm to America’s innovation economy and job growth.

From Charles Goodyear and Thomas Edison in the nineteenth century to IBM and Microsoft today, patent licensing has been essential in bringing patented innovation to the marketplace, creating economic growth and a flourishing society. But expanding FTC authority to regulate requests for licensing royalties under vague evidentiary and legal standards only weakens patents and create costly uncertainty.

This will hamper America’s innovation economy—causing reduced economic growth, lost jobs, and reduced standards of living for everyone, incl. the consumers the FTC is charged to protect.

Existing Tools

Second, the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) and courts have long had the legal tools to weed out bad patents and punish bad actors, and these tools were massively expanded just two years ago with the enactment of the America Invents Act.

This is important because the real concern with demand letters is that the underlying patents are invalid.

No one denies that owners of valid patents have the right to license their property or to sue infringers, or that patent owners can even make patent licensing their sole business model, as did Charles Goodyear and Elias Howe in the mid-nineteenth century.

There are too many of these tools to discuss in my brief remarks, but to name just a few: recipients of demand letters can sue patent owners in courts through declaratory judgment actions and invalidate bad patents. And the PTO now has four separate programs dedicated solely to weeding out bad patents.

For those who lack the knowledge or resources to access these legal tools, there are now numerous legal clinics, law firms and policy organizations that actively offer assistance.

Again, further systemic changes to the patent system are unwarranted because there are existing legal tools with established legal standards to address the bad actors and their bad patents.

If Congress enacts a law this year, then it should secure full funding for the PTO. Weakening patents and creating more uncertainties in the licensing process is not the solution.

Rhetoric

Lastly, Congress is being driven to revise the patent system on the basis of rhetoric and anecdote instead of objective evidence and reasoned explanations. While there are bad actors in the patent system, terms like PAE or patent troll constantly shift in meaning. These terms have been used to cover anyone who licenses patents, including universities, startups, companies that engage in R&D, and many others.

Classic American innovators in the nineteenth century like Thomas Edison, Charles Goodyear, and Elias Howe would be called PAEs or patent trolls today. In fact, they and other patent owners made royalty demands against thousands of end users.

Congress should exercise restraint when it is being asked to enact systemic legislative or regulatory changes on the basis of pejorative labels that would lead us to condemn or discriminate against classic innovators like Edison who have contributed immensely to America’s innovation economy.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the benefits or costs of patent licensing to the innovation economy is an important empirical and policy question, but systemic changes to the patent system should not be based on rhetoric, anecdotes, invalid studies, and incorrect claims about the historical and economic significance of patent licensing

As former PTO Director David Kappos stated last week in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee: “we are reworking the greatest innovation engine the world has ever known, almost instantly after it has just been significantly overhauled. If there were ever a case where caution is called for, this is it.”

Thank you.

“A Line in the Sand on the Calls for New Patent Legislation,” by Wayne Sobon

Adam Mossoff — 24 June 2013

Over at the blog for the Center for the Protection for Intellectual Property, Wayne Sobon, the Vice President and General Counsel of Inventergy, has posted an important essay that criticizes the slew of congressional bills that have been proposed in Congress in recent months.

In A Line in the Sand on the Calls for New Patent Legislation, Mr. Sobon responds to the heavy-handed rhetoric and emotionalism that dominates the debate today over patent licensing and litigation. He calls for a return to the real first principles of the patent system in discussions about patent licensing, as well as for more measured thinking and analysis about the costs of uncertainty created by never-ending systemic changes from legislation produced by heavy lobbying by interested parties. Here’s a small taste:

One genius of our patent system has been an implicit recognition that since its underlying subject matter, innovation, remains by definition in constant flux, the scaffolding of our system and the ability of all stakeholders to make reasonably consistent, prudent and socially efficient choices, should remain as stable as possible. But now these latest moves, demanding yet further significant changes to our patent laws, threaten that stability. And it is in fact systemic instability, from whatever source, that allows the very parasitic behaviors we have termed “troll”-like, to flourish.

It is silly and blindly ahistoric to lump anyone who seeks to license or enforce a patent right, but who does not themselves make a corresponding product, as a “troll.”

Read the whole thing here. Mr. Sobon’s essay reflects similar concerns expressed by Commissioner Joshua Wright this past April on the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation of what the FTC identifies as “patent assertion entities.”

In Federal Trade Commission, Intellectual Property, Patent, Regulation Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property, Josh Wright, licensing, PAE, patent assertion entity, patent licensing, patent reform, patent troll, Patents, politics, SHIELD Act

The SHIELD Act: When Bad Economic Studies Make Bad Laws

Adam Mossoff — 15 March 2013

Earlier this month, Representatives Peter DeFazio and Jason Chaffetz picked up the gauntlet from President Obama’s comments on February 14 at a Google-sponsored Internet Q&A on Google+ that “our efforts at patent reform only went about halfway to where we need to go” and that he would like “to see if we can build some additional consensus on smarter patent laws.” So, Reps. DeFazio and Chaffetz introduced on March 1 the Saving High-tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes (SHIELD) Act, which creates a “losing plaintiff patent-owner pays” litigation system for a single type of patent owner—patent licensing companies that purchase and license patents in the marketplace (and who sue infringers when infringers refuse their requests to license). To Google, to Representative DeFazio, and to others, these patent licensing companies are “patent trolls” who are destroyers of all things good—and the SHIELD Act will save us all from these dastardly “trolls” (is a troll anything but dastardly?).

As I and other scholars have pointed out, the “patent troll” moniker is really just a rhetorical epithet that lacks even an agreed-upon definition. The term is used loosely enough that it sometimes covers and sometimes excludes universities, Thomas Edison, Elias Howe (the inventor of the lockstitch in 1843), Charles Goodyear (the inventor of vulcanized rubber in 1839), and even companies like IBM. How can we be expected to have a reasonable discussion about patent policy when our basic terms of public discourse shift in meaning from blog to blog, article to article, speaker to speaker? The same is true of the new term, “Patent Assertion Entities,” which sounds more neutral, but has the same problem in that it also lacks any objective definition or usage.

Setting aside this basic problem of terminology for the moment, the SHIELD Act is anything but a “smarter patent law” (to quote President Obama). Some patent scholars, like Michael Risch, have begun to point out some of the serious problems with the SHIELD Act, such as its selectively discriminatory treatment of certain types of patent-owners. Moreover, as Professor Risch ably identifies, this legislation was so cleverly drafted to cover only a limited set of a specific type of patent-owner that it ended up being too clever. Unlike the previous version introduced last year, the 2013 SHIELD Act does not even apply to the flavor-of-the-day outrage over patent licensing companies—the owner of the podcast patent. (Although you wouldn’t know this if you read the supporters of the SHIELD Act like the EFF who falsely claim that this law will stop patent-owners like the podcast patent-owning company.)

There are many things wrong with the SHIELD Act, but one thing that I want to highlight here is that it based on a falsehood: the oft-repeated claim that two Boston University researchers have proven in a study that “patent troll suits cost American technology companies over $29 billion in 2011 alone.” This is what Rep. DeFazio said when he introduced the SHIELD Act on March 1. This claim was repeated yesterday by House Members during a hearing on “Abusive Patent Litigation.” The claim that patent licensing companies cost American tech companies $29 billion in a single year (2011) has become gospel since this study, The Direct Costs from NPE Disputes, was released last summer on the Internet. (Another name of patent licensing companies is “Non Practicing Entity” or “NPE.”) A Google search of “patent troll 29 billion” produces 191,000 hits. A Google search of “NPE 29 billion” produces 605,000 hits. Such is the making of conventional wisdom.

The problem with conventional wisdom is that it is usually incorrect, and the study that produced the claim of “$29 billion imposed by patent trolls” is no different. The $29 billion cost study is deeply and fundamentally flawed, as explained by two noted professors, David Schwartz and Jay Kesan, who are also highly regarded for their empirical and economic work in patent law. In their essay, Analyzing the Role of Non-Practicing Entities in the Patent System, also released late last summer, they detailed at great length serious methodological and substantive flaws in The Direct Costs from NPE Disputes. Unfortunately, the Schwartz and Kesan essay has gone virtually unnoticed in the patent policy debates, while the $29 billion cost claim has through repetition become truth.

In the hope that at least a few more people might discover the Schwartz and Kesan essay, I will briefly summarize some of their concerns about the study that produced the $29 billion cost figure. This is not merely an academic exercise. Since Rep. DeFazio explicitly relied on the $29 billion cost claim to justify the SHIELD Act, and he and others keep repeating it, it’s important to know if it is true, because it’s being used to drive proposed legislation in the real world. If patent legislation is supposed to secure innovation, then it behooves us to know if this legislation is based on actual facts. Yet, as Schwartz and Kesan explain in their essay, the $29 billion cost claim is based on a study that is fundamentally flawed in both substance and methodology.

In terms of its methodological flaws, the study supporting the $29 billion cost claim employs an incredibly broad definition of “patent troll” that covers almost every person, corporation or university that sues someone for infringing a patent that it is not currently being used to manufacture a product at that moment. While the meaning of the “patent troll” epithet shifts depending on the commentator, reporter, blogger, or scholar who is using it, one would be extremely hard pressed to find anyone embracing this expansive usage in patent scholarship or similar commentary today.

There are several reasons why the extremely broad definition of “NPE” or “patent troll” in the study is unusual even compared to uses of this term in other commentary or studies. First, and most absurdly, this definition, by necessity, includes every university in the world that sues someone for infringing one of its patents, as universities don’t manufacture goods. Second, it includes every individual and start-up company who plans to manufacture a patented invention, but is forced to sue an infringer-competitor who thwarted these business plans by its infringing sales in the marketplace. Third, it includes commercial firms throughout the wide-ranging innovation industries—from high tech to biotech to traditional manufacturing—that have at least one patent among a portfolio of thousands that is not being used at the moment to manufacture a product because it may be “well outside the area in which they make products” and yet they sue infringers of this patent (the quoted language is from the study). So, according to this study, every manufacturer becomes an “NPE” or “patent troll” if it strays too far from what somebody subjectively defines as its rightful “area” of manufacturing. What company is not branded an “NPE” or “patent troll” under this definition, or will necessarily become one in the future given inevitable changes in one’s business plans or commercial activities? This is particularly true for every person or company whose only current opportunity to reap the benefit of their patented invention is to license the technology or to litigate against the infringers who refuse license offers.

So, when almost every possible patent-owning person, university, or corporation is defined as a “NPE” or “patent troll,” why are we surprised that a study that employs this virtually boundless definition concludes that they create $29 billion in litigation costs per year? The only thing surprising is that the number isn’t even higher!

There are many other methodological flaws in the $29 billion cost study, such as its explicit assumption that patent litigation costs are “too high” without providing any comparative baseline for this conclusion. What are the costs in other areas of litigation, such as standard commercial litigation, tort claims, or disputes over complex regulations? We are not told. What are the historical costs of patent litigation? We are not told. On what basis then can we conclude that $29 billion is “too high” or even “too low”? We’re supposed to be impressed by a number that exists in a vacuum and that lacks any empirical context by which to evaluate it.

The $29 billion cost study also assumes that all litigation transaction costs are deadweight losses, which would mean that the entire U.S. court system is a deadweight loss according to the terms of this study. Every lawsuit, whether a contract, tort, property, regulatory or constitutional dispute is, according to the assumption of the $29 billion cost study, a deadweight loss. The entire U.S. court system is an inefficient cost imposed on everyone who uses it. Really? That’s an assumption that reduces itself to absurdity—it’s a self-imposed reductio ad absurdum!

In addition to the methodological problems, there are also serious concerns about the trustworthiness and quality of the actual data used to reach the $29 billion claim in the study. All studies rely on data, and in this case, the $29 billion study used data from a secret survey done by RPX of its customers. For those who don’t know, RPX’s business model is to defend companies against these so-called “patent trolls.” So, a company whose business model is predicated on hyping the threat of “patent trolls” does a secret survey of its paying customers, and it is now known that RPX informed its customers in the survey that their answers would be used to lobby for changes in the patent laws.

As every reputable economist or statistician will tell you, such conditions encourage exaggeration and bias in a data sample by motivating participation among those who support changes to the patent law. Such a problem even has a formal name in economic studies: self-selection bias. But one doesn’t need to be an economist or statistician to be able to see the problems in relying on the RPX data to conclude that NPEs cost $29 billion per year. As the classic adage goes, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

Even worse, as I noted above, the RPX survey was confidential. RPX has continued to invoke “client confidences” in refusing to disclose its actual customer survey or the resulting data, which means that the data underlying the $29 billion claim is completely unknown and unverifiable for anyone who reads the study. Don’t worry, the researchers have told us in a footnote in the study, they looked at the data and confirmed it is good. Again, it doesn’t take economic or statistical training to know that something is not right here. Another classic cliché comes to mind at this point: “it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.”

In fact, keeping data secret in a published study violates well-established and longstanding norms in all scientific research that data should always be made available for testing and verification by third parties. No peer-reviewed medical or scientific journal would publish a study based on a secret data set in which the researchers have told us that we should simply trust them that the data is accurate. Its use of secret data probably explains why the $29 billion study has not yet appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, and, if economics has any claim to being an actual science, this study never will. If a study does not meet basic scientific standards for verifying data, then why are Reps. DeFazio and Chaffetz relying on it to propose national legislation that directly impacts the patent system and future innovation? If heads-in-the-clouds academics would know to reject such a study as based on unverifiable, likely biased claptrap, then why are our elected officials embracing it to create real-world legal rules?

And, to continue our running theme of classic clichés, there’s the rub. The more one looks at the actual legal requirements of the SHIELD Act, the more, in the words of Professor Risch, one is left “scratching one’s head” in bewilderment. The more one looks at the supporting studies and arguments in favor of the SHIELD Act, the more one is left, in the words of Professor Risch, “scratching one’s head.” The more and more one thinks about the SHIELD Act, the more one realizes what it is—legislation that has been crafted at the behest of the politically powerful (such as an Internet company who can get the President to do a special appearance on its own social media website) to have the government eliminate a smaller, publicly reviled, and less politically-connected group.

In short, people may have legitimate complaints about the ways in which the court system in the U.S. generally has problems. Commentators and Congresspersons could even consider revising the general legal rules governing patent ligtiation for all plaintiffs and defendants to make the ligitation system work better or more efficiently (by some established metric). Professor Risch has done exactly this in a recent Wired op-ed. But it’s time to call a spade a spade: the SHIELD Act is a classic example of rent-seeking, discriminatory legislation.

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