According to statistics released in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s “2013 Performance and Accountability Report” (pages 193-206), 2013 was a banner year for U.S. patent issuances and federal trademark registrations. New patent and trademark filings by Florida-based residents continued to accelerate in number, passing totals of several other states over the last decade and moving into 3rd place for federal trademark applications (FY2013) and 8th place for patent applications (FY2012) among the fifty U.S. states.
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Florida’s 2015 Patent Troll Prevention Act Signed into Law
Nine states, including Florida, have recently enacted “anti-patent troll” legislation in 2015, joining the seventeen states that passed similar legislation last year in 2014. Florida’s HB 439 ch. 501 part VII (“Patent Troll Prevention Act”), enacted in the 2015 session, prohibits bad faith assertions of patent infringement from being made, and provides a number of factors that allow a court to consider whether an allegation was made in bad faith. A determination of bad faith includes damages and reasonable attorney fees.