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illegal imports, is weaponized today by foreign non practicing entities or patent trolls. From Left,Rep. Willis C. Hawley, Senator Reed Smoot.With supply chain shortages, the global race to 5G, and the need to ensure the US leads in information technology, the United States International Trade Commission has an important role to play.
Unlike a court, which offers calibrated damages suited to the situation, if infringement has occurred, the USITC’s sole remedy when it finds patent infringement is to issue an exclusion order blocking the respondents’ infringing goods—and all their downstream products—from the US market. The lure of this drastic remedy is that it can be used to gain serious leverage over the company facing exclusion.
Companies that make these valuable goods cannot afford any risk of a total product ban. Even if a respondent has strong arguments that it has infringed no patents, the cataclysmic cost of total exclusion weighs heavily in favor of paying off the trolls to stop the case. They are forced to pay sky-high settlements, giving trolls huge windfalls. It is legalized extortion—not just of respondent companies, but of the U.S. consumers who purchase these products.