EFF's Defend Innovation Project: Analysis (Part 5)

Patents and licenses should be public right away.  Patent owners should be required to keep their public records up-to-date

The Problem:  "Patent owners often do not keep their records up-to-date at the Patent Office, making it nearly impossible for potential defendants to know what patents they infringe and appropriately make risk analyses before they move forward with a product. Patents are supposed and their related documents should be public to put parties on notice of what they can and cannot do; when those records aren’t public, inventors bear the cost."

The Solution:  "All patent owners should be required to keep their disclosures up to date throughout the life of the patent, or else the patent will be unenforceable. For example, patent owners should be required to update ownership and litigation records in a timely fashion. And, with the exception of relevant trade secrets, licenses to a patent should be reported within six months of their effective date."

(source)

  This makes sense to me.  I think it's well-worded and perfectly fair to both patent-holders and potential infringers.  There is no mandated penalty for failing to keep records up-to-date, which I think is a good thing.  Simply put, if you want to be able to enforce your rights on a patent, you have to give others a fair chance to discover that they might be infringing upon it.  Otherwise, you get a Kafkaesque minefield of potential lawsuits and no way of knowing where to step.

Next: The law should limit damages so that a patent owner can't collect millions if the patent represented only a tiny fraction of a defendant's product