Lawmakers Debate Patent Immunity For Banks

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Now that a small Texas company has a patent on scanning and archiving checks — something every bank does — that has survived a USPTO challenge, lawmakers feel they have to do something about it. Rather than reform patent law, they seem to think it wiser to protect the banks from having to pay billions in royalties by using eminent domain to buy the patent for an estimated $1 billion in taxpayer money, immunizing the banks. The bill is sponsored by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)."

Comments

Well, now...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that's just fucking retarded.

Can't really say more than that, unfortunately.

Or, instead of feeding the patent troll

[FireballX301]

They can cashier the USPTO Commissioner, appoint a new one, and order a comprehensive review.

A billion dollars. Talk about misuse of taxpayer funds.

You've got to be kidding

[nine-times]

WTF?

Patents are supposed to benefit the common good. That's their only purpose. Now that they recognize one case (in many) where patents are crippling productivity, harming the economy, and working against the common good, they do nothing to address the problem of people abusing the patent system. Instead, they take more money from the people, harming the common good further, in order to bail out banks.

That is completely absurd.

Re:Is anyone really surprised by this?

[Copid]

You'll see stock prices are random. Study after study proves it. It's not a mystery but there isn't a formula either.

On the whole, there are a lot of meaningful patterns that we would do well to note. Shiller's graph of P/E ratios vs long term yield in Irrational Exuberance is pretty illustrative that there are fundamental rules governing trends and that the efficient market hypothesis is wishful thinking. Short term prices may be a random walk, but that's about as far as I'd go.

You'll see that cutting tax rates leads to increased Gov't revenues by growing the economy. (Don't give me the crap about Reagan, he spent it and then some but it busted the Soviet Union..not a bad use of the money).

Let's see the data. Seriously. I've seen a lot of people attempt to see the Laffer curve in the data (my favorite being this train wreck of reasoning, but as far as I can tell, they're not doing much better than the people who are attempting to see Jesus in their toast.

You can't blame long term problems on groups who haven't been in control of the process.

I don't remember seeing a lot of vetoes of profligate spending under Republican presidencies when Democrats ran congress, and for the brief period when they ran both, I can't say that they were an example of fiscal restraint. Face it: Politicians have strong incentives to borrow and spend.

You'll see a failure to increase a program budget by the proposed X% is called a "cut". If your boss didn't give you that 10% raise did your salary go down?

If inflation is greater than 10%, yes it did.