By Chris Rourk, Jackson Walker LLP (December 16, 2016, 10:58 PM EST) -- A driving force in patent litigation reform is the perception that many of the patent lawsuits that are threatened or filed are meritless. Significant sums of money and time are wasted litigating cases where the accused products clearly do not infringe and/or the asserted patents should not have been issued, and where the matter would never proceed to trial due to the weakness of the lawsuit. Because of this, patent owners with legitimate claims are often tarred with the same brush used against the so-called patent trolls. One way to help address this concern would be to institute a pre-suit review at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, similar to the process used by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for investigation of certain employment discrimination violations....