On October 13, 2020, Michael Sandonato was featured on SupplyChainBrain, where he discussed the Advancing America’s Interests Act, a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that is intended to restrict the ability of non-practicing entities to file suits with the International Trade Commission (ITC).
“The International Trade Commission is a quasi-judicial body that sits in Washington and has the ability to issue something called an exclusion order in cases of patent infringement and other unfair acts,” said Sandonato. “The way that some perceive non-practicing entities as taking advantage of the system is as follows: as the rules exist now, in order to gain access as a patent owner you need to prove that you have what’s called a domestic industry that warrants protection. For a non-practicing entity, they of course cannot point to any manufacturing or other activities related to their products in the United States.”
In order to gain access to the ITC, non-practicing entities “would point to their own expenditures and efforts in licensing their patents to others, and for non-practicing entities that have licensed their patents to others, they might try to point to the activities, for example the manufacturing activities, of their licensees. This bill would dramatically limit their ability to do that,” Sandonato explained.
Click here to watch the interview.