Zoe Lofgren: “I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Chair, I am afraid I must oppose my colleague's amendment. I believe that the…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Chair, I am afraid I must oppose my colleague's amendment. I believe that the amendment would basically gut core elements of the Innovation Act protections for small business and leave small businesses exposed. We have discussed the fee-shifting issue, so I want to focus on two other issues: the discovery cost-shifting and the heightened pleading provisions that I think are very important in the bill. First, on pleading requirements, patent assertion entities often sue and do not reveal what patent the defendant is allegedly infringing or how, and that is why the Innovation Act requires greater particularity in pleading. The bill's requirement includes information that the plaintiffs should already have on hand, but the bill specifically provides an exception for information that is not reasonably accessible to the plaintiff. The amendment would eliminate that provision. Relative to discovery, one of the ways that patent entities bully defendants is by driving up the cost of litigation through broad discovery requests. Section 3 of the bill directs the court to limit discovery until claim construction occurs in the routine Markman hearing. That gives defendants a break from costly discovery requests until it is more clear what the claims against them are.…”