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Legislation To Overhaul US Patent System
FutureDomain sends us to a PC World report on the filing yesterday of legislation to overhaul the US patent system completely. The US has the only system worldwide that tries to ascertain who first invented a thing — everywhere else the criterion is who filed first, and the new legislation would bring the US into line. Identical bills were introduced in both the House and the Senate by, in each case, bipartisan sponsors. The corporate roster of backers includes Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, and nearly everyone else. From the article: "The provisions of the Patent Reform Act would... restrict damages that patent holders can receive for infringement lawsuits, create a new procedure to challenge the validity of a patent after it has been granted, and boost resources for the US Patent and Trademark Office."
Those of you reading for my posts know that I am often accused of astroturfing for various companies or being a hack or whatever because of my generally pro-copyright views and (since 1997) general lack of enthusiasm for the scalability of OSS. However, on this one I cast my lot with the No Logo, penguin-on-a-black-t-shirt crowd and call this out for what it is: an attempt by very strong corporate interests with large in-house law departments to do an end-round on the prior art of small inventors who have not filed. the result? Anything from a Japan-like insane number of defensive, speculative, and useless patent filing jamboree to a Europe-like devaluation of the value of the inventor in lieu of the mba-like hacks (full disclosure: I have an MBA from a top school, but I also have my bona fides :). The USA may be wrong on the war on Iraq and still using Imperial measurements, but fark the crazy idea of 'whoever files' in this case - it's anti-consumer in every way possible.