A patent is an intellectual property right granted by the federal government to an inventor to exclude others from making, using, or selling the invention for a limited time, in exchange for public disclosure of the invention. Article I, Section 8, clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the authority to offer this protection to patent holders. Patent infringement is the unauthorized making, using, offering for sale, selling, and importing of a patented invention. The patent provides the patent holder with the right to protect against such infringement by suing for relief in the appropriate federal court. Such relief may include an injunction to halt the patent infringement or an award of damages to compensate for any harm. Because patents are exclusively governed by federal law, federal district courts have original jurisdiction in all civil cases relating to patents. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has jurisdiction over appeals from district court decisions. The amount of patent infringement litigation has substantially increased during the last decade. Some commentators believe that the possibility of a large financial award together with the minimal information required to bring a patent infringement claim has encouraged abuses of the patent system in courts by "patent trolls." However, others believe that the information required by the patent infringement complaint is sufficient to provide notice to the defendant of the pending claims, reserving the disclosure of more detailed information for the discovery stage of litigation. Recently introduced patent reform legislation seeks to minimize abuses with, among other provisions, changes to pleading requirements for a patent infringement claim. This report will discuss the rules and procedure for initiating a patent infringement claim in federal court. The discussion will focus on the level of detail necessary for a patent infringement complaint. The report will then conclude with several legislative proposals during the 112 th and 113 th Congresses addressing patent infringement pleadings and litigation by "patent trolls." Patent infringement cases begin with the filing of a complaint by a party seeking relief in federal court. Federal courts follow the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which dictate the different steps parties must complete in order to move through the litigation process. Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure requires a complaint to contain a statement showing a claim for relief and the grounds for the court's jurisdiction. The complaint must also contain sufficient information to satisfy Rule 12(b)(6). This rule permits defendants to make a motion to dismiss a case if the plaintiff has failed to state a claim, for which relief could be granted, in the complaint. Because litigation is a costly and lengthy process, courts need the ability, in the beginning of the process, to dismiss any frivolous claims that do not have the possibility of resulting in any relief for either party. For assistance in satisfying these rules, attorneys often rely on the sample forms provided in the appendix of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as models for their complaints. Form 18 provides a model for a "Complaint of Patent Infringement." According to this form, a complaint for patent infringement must include four statements asserting jurisdiction, patent ownership, patent infringement by the defendant, and demand for relief. Form 18 does not demand a specific level of particularity for these statements. Courts have interpreted Rule 8 to require complaints to include only "'a short and plain statement of the claim' that will give the defendant fair notice of what the plaintiff's claim is and the grounds upon which it rests" rather than fully developed allegations at this stage of the pleadings. This approach is described as the "notice pleading" standard, emphasizing the primary purpose of complaints as notifying parties of the general issues of the case. In 2007 and 2009 decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court articulated a higher standard of particularity for complaints: the plausibility standard. In Bell Atlantic Corporation v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal , the U.S. Supreme Court held that federal courts must evaluate the "plausibility of claims" made at the pleading stage when determining whether a civil complaint should survive a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. In Bell Atlantic Corporation v. Twombly, the plaintiffs' complaint alleged that the defendants violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. The complaint included only circumstantial evidence from which anti-competitive behavior could be inferred but not any details supporting an actual conspiracy in violation of the act. The defendants brought a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss the plaintiffs' complaint for failure to state a claim. The defendants alleged that the facts in the complaint addressed only one piece of evidence and not the entire claim of violating Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The U.S. Supreme Court held that an antitrust complaint must provide "enough factual matter (taken as true) to suggest that an agreement was made" in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. This holding introduced a plausibility standard, for at least antitrust complaints, requiring the complaint to allege sufficient facts so that the claim appears "plausible." After Twombly , lower federal courts disagreed as to whether this decision applied the heightened pleading standard, the plausibility standard, to all complaints. However, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2009 decision, Ashcroft v. Iqbal, clarified and affirmed that the plausibility standard applied to all civil complaints. In this case, the defendants also made a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss the claim. The plaintiff's complaint outlined facts intending to show unlawful discrimination by high-ranking government officers. However, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the plaintiff failed to plead sufficient facts to state a claim for unlawful discrimination as a recitation of the facts does not show that the defendants' policy was plausibly discriminatory. In its opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court reasserted the heightened "plausibility" pleading. According to the Court, "to survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to 'state a claim for relief that is plausible on its face.'" Despite the Twombly and Iqbal holdings, the level of particularity regarding information in the patent complaint, specifically Form 18, is a frequent issue before the courts. Some courts and commentators have assumed that that the heightened plausibility pleading standard applies to all federal civil cases. However, others have argued that the heightened pleading standard does not apply to patent infringement claims. Defendants in patent infringement cases can file a motion to dismiss the entire case by alleging that the complaint does not provide sufficient information to state a valid claim for patent infringement. However, two recent Federal Circuit cases have held that Form 18 requires sufficient information to survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. In McZeal v. Spring Nextel Corp., the defendant argued that the patent infringement complaint failed to explain how its product infringed the plaintiff's patent. The complaint named the patent and the allegedly infringing defendant's device but did not explain how that device operated to infringe the patent. The Federal Circuit, however, found that a patent infringement complaint is not required to describe the relationship between each element of the claim and the infringing device. Specific information such as this "is something to be determined through discovery." In a more recent case, K-Tech Telecommunications v. Time Warner Cable, the defendants moved to dismiss the patent infringement complaint on the grounds that it did not sufficiently state a claim under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Twombly and Iqbal standards. The defendants claimed that the plaintiff failed to identify the allegedly infringing device used by the defendant and to connect any allegedly infringing activity to the patents. The Federal Circuit again held that the information required by Form 18 alone is sufficient for pleading a patent infringement claim as the form states a plausible claim and places the alleged infringer on notice. Form 18 also does not require a plaintiff to identify the accused device. Moreover, the court added that Form 18 controls to the extent that any conflict exists between the Twombly plausibility standard and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure forms. A "patent troll" is a pejorative term for a "non-practicing entity" (NPE) or a "patent assertion entity" (PAE). These entities are people or companies that do not develop, manufacture, or sell any product covered by the patents they own. The business model of a PAE instead focuses on buying and asserting patents against companies that have already begun using and developing the patent, often without knowledge of the PAE's ownership of the patent. Critics of PAEs argue that these patent-holders extort the patent system through litigation by extracting licensing fees or damage awards from companies that cannot afford the cost of litigation. Critics also argue that "patent trolling" deters innovation and discourages companies from seeking patents, and thus delivering new products to the market. However, defendants of PAEs view this practice as encouraging investment in undercapitalized projects. Commentators have linked PAEs together with the current patent pleading requirements for a patent infringement claim. They argue that the minimal information required in a patent infringement complaint encourages PAEs to initiate "frivolous" lawsuits that otherwise would not survive the initial pleading stage under a more stringent standard. Even though many of the PAE infringement lawsuits are ultimately unsuccessful, the costly discovery stages of the lawsuit contribute to the financial burden carried by the defendants of these claims. Moreover, with the threat of costly litigation, defendants are more likely to settle or to enter into an agreement to pay licensing fees. The 112 th Congress passed the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act of 2011 (AIA), which sought to address the proliferation of PAEs. The debate leading to the AIA demonstrated growing congressional concern over the high costs of litigation patent disputes initiated by PAEs and their enforcement of patents. The AIA does not include specific reforms relating to patent pleadings and PAEs. However, Section 34 of the AIA instructs the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study the costs, benefits, and consequences of litigation by "non-practicing entities" and "patent assertion entities."