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[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 4840 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

<DOC>

118th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                S. 4840

   To amend title 35, United States Code, to establish a rebuttable 
 presumption that a permanent injunction should be granted in certain 
                 circumstances, and for other purposes.

_______________________________________________________________________

                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                             July 30, 2024

 Mr. Coons (for himself and Mr. Cotton) introduced the following bill; 
  which was read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL

 
   To amend title 35, United States Code, to establish a rebuttable 
 presumption that a permanent injunction should be granted in certain 
                 circumstances, and for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Realizing Engineering, Science, and 
Technology Opportunities by Restoring Exclusive Patent Rights Act of 
2024'' or the ``RESTORE Patent Rights Act of 2024''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds the following:
            (1) Securing effective and reliable patent protection for 
        new technologies is critical to maintaining the competitive 
        advantage of the United States in the global innovation 
        economy.
            (2) The Constitution of the United States empowers Congress 
        to grant inventors the ``exclusive Right'' to their inventions 
        in order to ``promote the Progress of Science and the useful 
        Arts''.
            (3) The right to prevent others from making, using, 
        offering to sell, selling, or importing a patented invention 
        without authority from the inventor is the core of the patent 
        right, ensuring that an inventor enjoys, for a limited time, 
        the sole benefit of the inventor's invention or discovery.
            (4) Congress and the courts of the United States have long 
        secured the constitutionally protected patent right through the 
        traditional equitable remedy of an injunction.
            (5) Given the irreparable harm that is caused by multiple 
        acts of infringement or willful infringement of a patent, 
        courts historically presumed that an injunction should be 
        granted to prevent such acts, with a burden on defendants to 
        rebut such a presumption with standard equitable defenses.
            (6) Recently, courts have ended the approach described in 
        paragraph (5), which contradicts the traditional, historical 
        practice governing the equitable remedy described in that 
        paragraph.
            (7) Eliminating the traditional, historical equitable 
        practice of applying a rebuttable presumption of injunctive 
        relief in the case of continuing acts of infringement or 
        willful infringement of a patent has--
                    (A) substantially reduced the ability of patent 
                owners to obtain injunctions to stop continuing or 
                willful infringement of patents; and
                    (B) created incentives for large, multinational 
                companies to commit predatory acts of infringement, 
                especially with respect to patents owned by 
                undercapitalized entities, such as individual 
                inventors, institutions of higher education, startups, 
                and small or medium-sized enterprises.

SEC. 3. REBUTTABLE PRESUMPTION THAT INJUNCTIVE RELIEF IS WARRANTED.

    Section 283 of title 35, United States Code, is amended--
            (1) by striking ``The several'' and inserting the 
        following:
    ``(a) In General.--The several''; and
            (2) by adding at the end the following:
    ``(b) Rebuttable Presumption.--If, in a case under this title, the 
court enters a final judgment finding infringement of a right secured 
by patent, the patent owner shall be entitled to a rebuttable 
presumption that the court should grant a permanent injunction with 
respect to that infringing conduct.''.
                                 <all>
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