Throughout my time in Congress, I was proud to bring together Democrats and Republicans to craft and pass legislation that was foundational in building the nation’s innovation economy. As the founder of the House Internet Caucus, and author of the 1992 law that allowed for the first commercial use of the internet, I wanted to ensure that America’s innovators and entrepreneurs had the tools they needed to outwork and outperform their competitors around the world.
During my years of service, fixing core problems in our patent system remained an important but unfulfilled goal. Constituents and stakeholders would raise concerns about the ways bad actors commonly known as patent trolls were gaming the system – buying up old, outdated patents for the sole purpose of suing companies that were actually developing new products and growing our economy. Yet, building consensus between Democrats and Republicans on how best to tackle the problem remained elusive.
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