Thanks for the comment. The Coalition has been around for some time. I believe some of the key folks in the early days of the reform movement, e.g., Bob Armitage of Lilly, Phil Johnson of Johnson & Johnson, and Gary Griswald of 3M, were involved in its creation.

I could be wrong, but I don’t believe the Coalition stands for an all-out elimination of punitive damages for willful infringement. Instead, the group appears to want a scaling back of the situations in which willfulness applies.

Why a “scaling back”? Based on the “What we stand for” page on the website, it seems fair to assume that the common complaint about willfulness - that it discourages our brightest folks from reading patents and other technical references - is behind this policy objective:

“Limiting Willful Infringement – To further the constitutional purpose of the patent system and to limit patent lawsuits to consideration of only objectively determined factors, we support limiting punitive damages to situations involving truly egregious conduct by infringers.”

I’m not sure that this puts them between the “baddies” and the inventors…in fact, you might view this as pro-inventor because it would (presumably) add some efficiencies to the patent litigation process.

Thoughts?

I am not familiar with the Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform, but it does not seem like eliminating punitive damages based upon willful infringement places them squarely on the patentee’s side of this debate. Am I missing something, or does this group hang its had right in between the Patent Reform baddies and the inventors?

Brett