As a result, Synopsys will be banned from selling, licensing, leasing, importing, or making emulation technology in the U.S. as it will infringe on Mentor’s patent. Therefore, if you are a U.S. user of Synopsys’ technology you may want to contact your provider to ensure your software will be supported in the future.
Synopsys claimed that Mentor had infringed on their patents. However, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ended up invalidating Synopsys’ patents due to previous IP from Mentor. To add salt to the wound, Mentor was awarded $36 million in damages and were recommended to take further legal routes to determine supplemental damages.
How Synopsys was able to patent their technology in the first place if Mentor was already protected by a patent? Is the patent office and the patent petitioner doing their due diligence in the literature search?
Or perhaps the problem is with recent changes in patent law that force companies to publicly disclosure their IP after 18 months of filing an international patents. Patents restricted to the U.S., however, can remain secret. Nonetheless, will forcing companies to out their IP before protection is issued make it easier for people to steal your IP?
Deepak Hegde, assistant professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, studied the new patent rules and found that the changes did make better quality patents. He said, “When we examine indicators of patent value, we find consistent evidence that the least-valuable and least-impactful patents are those that opted for pre-grant secrecy.”
Hegde also found that even with the loophole that protects the secrecy of U.S.-based patents, most inventors prefer to release information after 18 months (see previous article). However, Hegde’s study did not address increases IP theft and counterfeiting.
Have we therefore found the answer? What do you think? Do we need to fix patent law to limit the number of disputes? Is it too easy to patent an IP? Have you been hit with a patent dispute or worse, run into a patent troll? Comment below.