The White House are hoping to majorly progress with new initiatives aimed to combat patent trolls while enhancing and protecting American inventors and innovations.

The latest efforts to strengthen the patent system in the U.S. go back to June 2013 when President Barack Obama issued five execution actions. The White House recognizes an "explosion of abusive litigation" have taken place in recent years with the intent to not reward innovation and extract settlements based on questionable statements. Companies under such actions are referred to as "patent trolls," also known as Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs), and they may cost the economy billions of dollars.

"In the last two years, the number of lawsuits brought by patent trolls has nearly tripled, and account for 62 [percent] of all patent lawsuits in America," wrote Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy Gene Sperling. "All told, the victims of patent trolls paid $29 billion in 2011, a 400 [percent] increase from 2005 -- not to mention tens of billions dollars more in lost shareholder value."

During a Fireside Hangout in February 2013, President Obama stated the PAEs "don't actually produce anything themselves. They're just trying to essentially leverage and hijack somebody else's idea and see if they can extort some money out of them."

Despite making reforms, the Obama administration reassured they were not making it more difficult for the pursuance of a legitimate intellectual property rights or defense of valid patents.

In 2012, the White House estimated patent trolls delivered 100,000 demand letters, which threatened companies in the Fortune 500 to mom and pop shops.

Now in 2014, the White House launched a new website with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The new website aims to help consumers and businesses under their rights and answers to common questions if they were to receive a demand letter. The website provides information about related lawsuits, glossary, and what's patent infringement. The information on the website, however, should not be considered as a replacement to legal advice.

The White House also announced the implementation of a training program to address concerns about "overly broad" patent claims as well as incentives for inventors who can deliver "game-changing technologies."

As Latin Post reported, Apple Inc. teamed with Google, Cisco, Facebook, Intel, and Yahoo!, among other tech companies, to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to make it easier for technology companies to collect legal fees from patent holders who have lost infringement lawsuits. Apple stated it receives dozens of letters challenging royalties for every case that officially goes to court.

The research firm PatentFreedom revealed Apple and Google have each been sued more than 190 times in the last five years by "patent assertion entities," which are companies that "get most of their revenue from patent licensing and enforcement." As AppleInsider noted, Apple faced 92 patent lawsuits in the U.S. during the last three years and approximately half are unresolved.

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