FTC Offers Recommendations To Better Align Patent System And Competition Policy

As part of its continuing efforts to better align the country's patent system with its competition policy, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently released a 300-page report, The Evolving IP Marketplace: Aligning Patent Notice and Remedies with Competition (Report), which makes numerous recommendations to further that alignment. The Report notes that, while the patent system and competition policy both promote innovation and enhance consumer welfare, tensions can develop between the two as a result of the patent system conferring exclusivity on patent owners and the antitrust laws seeking to promote competition. The Report contends that those tensions can be better balanced by reforms in two areas: (1) improved notice, i.e., better informing the public of which technology is claimed by a patent; and (2) improved patent infringement remedies that would result from courts making a more consistent use of "an economically grounded approach to calculating