"balance" awards for damages, limiting them to only economic value of the improvement; establish fair standards for punitive damages; restrict forum shopping, and improve patent quality. In addition, the bill would create a "first-to-file" system

Any bill sponsored by Orrin Hatch can't be all good, and my preliminary reading of this is that it reinforces why I am skeptical about patent reform. Pretty much every item favor the large corporate inventor over the small independent inventor. This has a good side, since a lot of small independent inventors are more like blackmail artists than inventors, but the bill seems one-sided doing nothing to reign in the monopoly power the large corporations get from their patent portfolios. I'd rather both sides agree to an armistice - no more patents.