As the owner and founder of Queen Tackle, a small North Carolina fishing tackle business I run with my son, we help contribute to the $2 trillion American manufacturing industry. But as a small business, we’re also acutely aware of our bottom line.
I currently have a patent pending, and as someone who speaks to others in similar manufacturing businesses, I know that reforms in the American patent system have played a critical role in our economic resurgence. Undoing these reforms, as some now want to do, would put companies like mine at risk.
Patent-trolls frequently target American manufacturers. This is exactly what I recently experienced. A much larger competitor accused me of patent infringement and filed suit, never even specifying the patent that had allegedly been infringed upon. Challenging this suit has not been cheap. And battling a case like this in the courts is a long, slow process. Many small companies might just give up.
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