Congress is pushing two bills that would bring back some of the worst patents and empower patent trolls.The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA), S. 2140, would throw out crucial rules that ban patents on many abstract ideas. Courts will be ordered to approve patents on things like ordering food on a mobile phone or doing basic financial functions online. If PERA Passes, the floodgates will open for these vague software patents that will be used to sue small companies and individuals. This bill even allows for a type of patent on human genes that the Supreme Court rightly disallowed in 2013.A second bill, the PREVAIL Act, S. 2220, would sharply limit the public’s right to challenge patents that never should have been granted in the first place.
