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New Patent Reform Proposal Focuses on Education
CNet is reporting that a new proposal before Congress is attempting to increase the number of federal judges who specialize in patent litigation. From the article: "The proposal prescribes $5 million each year in federal funding over the next decade for "educational and professional development" programs for designated judges and to pay the salaries of new, specially appointed clerks with patent expertise. Under the bill, patent cases would continue to be randomly assigned to judges, but with a notable exception. Any judge who practices within a court district offering the pilot program but who chooses not to sign up for the extra training would have the option of transferring patent cases to a program participant." Techdirt also has a short writeup on why this specialization might not necessarily be a good thing.
It's federally-funded, but it'll likely be industry that does the education. I see lots of ways some careful "teaching" could skew the courts.
The author of the article presents CAFC as if it were uniformly a bad experience. This is not exactly the case. Prior to CAFC the state of patent litigation was very bad - judges with no experience in patent law were making arbitrary decisions that arbitrary and inconsistent, venue shopping was the order of the day, many really valid patents and important were being overturned, etc.
While CAFC has resulted in some quite bad decisions, it has at least brought some consistency. Now that there is this consitency it is up to Congress to correct the patent law to exclude or refine the scope of patent law.
1- Let some problem annoy too many people until everyone ask them to intervene.
2- Introduce a solution that is worse than the problem, and only helps gov & friends.
3- when people complain, say "Hey, didn't you ask for it?"
That happened with CAN-SPAM, and now apparently will happen to patents.
I wonder how the government proposed "Copyright reform" would look like.
If you do buisness with any American company, YOU ARE.
I don't just mean the $5 million a year (a drop of piss in the bucket of American government spending), but the entire patent issue at large.
For 'targeted' products, like the iPod, eBay, or Amazon, you're paying some money up front that the producer is setting aside to pay for lawsuits. After a ruling, the cost of that payout is being passed on to the consumer.
I'm not speaking against it, thats how capitalism works and I love it. It just seems that so often people cheer on a lawsuit without realizing what it does to all of us. There is a time and a place for severe financial punishment, but it is abused and I'm certain it affects all of us.
Any judge who practices within a court district ... but who chooses not to sign up for the extra training would have the option of transferring patent cases to a program participant.
It isn't clear that this has been thought out very well. Suppose an "untrained" judge does not opt to transfer the case to a "trained" one. Will that be grounds for appeal? Can a litigant request a "trained" judge? I think one can safely assume that the parties with deep pockets will game the system if it's possible.
In the UK the Judges are patent specialists. They are pretty smart too considering the wide range of subject matter they are able to assimilate. I recall reading that prior to one complex case on biotechnology a prof from one of the Oxbridge colleges came in to give the judges a crash course which they just lapped up.