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Title VI - Patent and Trademark Office
This takes up about half of the actual bill. Since I'm not totally familiar with the current structure of the PTO, this could either be a lot of re-wording, or (more likely) a complete restructuring of the office itself. Note that this seems to only apply to the PTO office/organization. It doesn't have anything to do with the types of patents issued, but how they do their day-to-day business, how they evaluate their staff, and pick their work force.

In Trudel's main(?) HR 1907 page, under THE MAIN THING TO REMEMBER, he complains about Title VI. The specific part that he mentions is Section 2(b)(6) on page 62. This paragraph says:

(6) may, when the Director determines that it is practicable, efficient, and cost-effective to do so, use, with the consent of the United States and the agency, government, or international organization concerned, the services, records, facilities, or personnel of any State or local government agency or instrumentality or foreign government or international organization to perform functions on its behalf;

If the "consent of the United States" became easily obtainable, I can see how this could be seen as a potential loss of sovereignty (although perhaps many non-US people would be arguably better at checking) but I don't see why he specifically points to Japan; a search thru the text of HR1907 for "japan" yields no hits.

The earlier issue(s) he mentions can be found in Section 3(a) on pages 65-68:

• (1) ... 'Director' ... shall be appointed by the President ...
• (5) REMOVAL.--The Director may be removed from office by the President.

Apparently this is exactly what Trudel is ranting about if you follow the link 'backgrounds' (leading to just more rant):

The worst news is hidden. Embedded in the middle of the official's talk was a phrase, "re-examination rights." Did that mean that any U.S. firm with patents will be subject to endlessly defending them against re-examination by the Japanese keiretsus?

Re-examination occurs when someone challenges a patent, usually when there is litigation.
Today, if one firm infringes on another firm's patent, it is running a high risk, potentially facing triple damages and legal fees if found guilty. And the cost to defend patents is more or less affordable, even for smaller firms. The Japanese have hated this system for years. Their patent system tends more to distribute technology than to restrict its use. The patent official admitted that my worst fears were valid when we spoke privately. Some Japanese officials were calling Tokyo on their cellular phones to report, "The U.S. has given us its patent system."
(Emphasis by me)

I find nothing wrong with more bias on distributing than restricting technology, especially when i see the patent system misused as a tool to block useful but common concepts from the competition. And it doesn't look like the whole patent system was overthrown, just it's now a little easier to attack some dumb and wrongly granted patent. But Trudel is making a nice conspiracy theory about this:

The sellout occurred in letters of agreement between Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and Japanese Ambassador Takahazu Kuriyama, dated August 16, 1994.

In my opinion (but i'm not a patent attorney) the agreement makes perfect sense and is a step to establish similar procedures for patent law in the USA and Japan. The 'Ron Brown' link is really strange, apparently it tries to explain his death with brownian motion.

Apparently this is exactly what Trudel is ranting about if you follow the link 'backgrounds' (leading to just more rant):

The worst news is hidden. Embedded in the middle of the official's talk was a phrase, "re-examination rights." Did that mean that any U.S. firm with patents will be subject to endlessly defending them against re-examination by the Japanese keiretsus?

Re-examination occurs when someone challenges a patent, usually when there is litigation.
Today, if one firm infringes on another firm's patent, it is running a high risk, potentially facing triple damages and legal fees if found guilty. And the cost to defend patents is more or less affordable, even for smaller firms. The Japanese have hated this system for years. Their patent system tends more to distribute technology than to restrict its use. The patent official admitted that my worst fears were valid when we spoke privately. Some Japanese officials were calling Tokyo on their cellular phones to report, "The U.S. has given us its patent system."
(Emphasis by me)

I find nothing wrong with more bias on distributing than restricting technology, especially when i see the patent system misused as a tool to block useful but common concepts from the competition. And it doesn't look like the whole patent system was overthrown, just it's now a little easier to attack some dumb and wrongly granted patent. But Trudel is making a nice conspiracy theory about this:

The sellout occurred in letters of agreement between Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and Japanese Ambassador Takahazu Kuriyama, dated August 16, 1994.

In my opinion (but i'm not a patent attorney) the agreement makes perfect sense and is a step to establish similar procedures for patent law in the USA and Japan. The 'Ron Brown' link is really strange, apparently it tries to explain his death with brownian motion.

I don't know what is in the bill and hopefully some lawyer type will post a synopsis shortly, and we can all have a discussion of its merits.

However this guy's webpage is poor departure point for this debate. As has already been pointed out, the layout is atrocious. In addition, he rants on about this horrible bill and how it was passed and that it is bad for all of us, especially our children(?!?). But nowhere in his incoherent gibberish does he give any examples of what exactly he thinks is wrong with the bill.

And his suggestions on how to handle this situation? (partially hidden under the graphic) He puts up a couple of sound clips of movie dialogue of people recommending nuclear strikes as the best option for solving their problems. Real fscking mature.

If this had been posted in Slashdot threads, it would immediately been tagged as Flamebait and ignore by all. Instead it gets posted as a story so we can all rush out and read the page.

Sheesh.

I don't know what is in the bill and hopefully some lawyer type will post a synopsis shortly, and we can all have a discussion of its merits.

However this guy's webpage is poor departure point for this debate. As has already been pointed out, the layout is atrocious. In addition, he rants on about this horrible bill and how it was passed and that it is bad for all of us, especially our children(?!?). But nowhere in his incoherent gibberish does he give any examples of what exactly he thinks is wrong with the bill.

And his suggestions on how to handle this situation? (partially hidden under the graphic) He puts up a couple of sound clips of movie dialogue of people recommending nuclear strikes as the best option for solving their problems. Real fscking mature.

If this had been posted in Slashdot threads, it would immediately been tagged as Flamebait and ignore by all. Instead it gets posted as a story so we can all rush out and read the page.

Sheesh.

I did some digging and found this url:


http://www.trudelgroup.com/pwars.htm


Now normally I am a bit suspicious about people who advocate conspiracy theories and the like, but in this case the point of view advocated at the above site - namely that the patent office is under attack by legislation by congress - might be interesting to us geeks, specifically because if "they" are right, congress has actually passed a bill through the house which would get rid of some of our headaches over patents.

These guys don't want that, but we do, at least to some extent perhaps. Maybe this is worth looking into and supporting (instead of resisting, as the page at the URL suggests).