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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)."
I mean, it's not like substantive patent reform -- in particular reform that as a side effect fixes this specific case -- is something they can exactly toss together before the term is up. And now that pretty much everyone realizes our economy is treading water before a recession, keeping the banks up seems like a good idea. I mean if we're going to be spending billions in tax payer money to keep banks afloat after the subprime mortgage fiasco, this doesn't seem like that big a deal.
Sometimes a band aid is better than a hastily planned and thus ill-conceived surgery.
The enemies of Democracy are
If you consider that pretty much all money in existence today is backed solely by debt, is anyone really surprised?
Why does anyone entertain the idea that the banks need to be bailed out? I would be inclined to let the economy finally crumble, and rebuild it. Sure, it'll suck, but we'll be better off because of it, if we fix it the right way.
The US government has consistently demonstrated innovation in this area. I think the ideal course of action would be to bomb the headquarters of the patent troll company. End of bank cheque problem. End of patent troll problem. Zero litigation.
-1 not first post
... and it's not pretty.
Giving a patent holder a billion dollars to buy their patent will encourage patent trolls to come out in force. The government's giving away billions here, why not give it a go? You can patent something obvious, sue the banks and donate to the political parties. Soon enough someone will buy you out, and you get to retire a very wealthy person!
Sure, it may not work out so easily, but what's to stop anyone from trying?
True - if the banks have implemented a valid patent, they should pay for it. Obviously they felt it was important enough to change their process to that method, meaning that it wasn't obvious to any of the banking staff before.
The issue at stake with the $1bn is the possibility that Ballard could simply refuse to license the cheques for any reasonable sum. I don't know how this method is even used or how integral a part it is to automated systems, but let's say he refused to sell it for any sum that was more than marginally below the cost of every banking branch in the country taking apart age-old machines.
The government has however the (much debated) right to 'eminent domain' - to force someone to sell something, for the greater good of the people, at a price they decide is fair. The issues there are wide, but consider e.g. someone discovers a cure to HIV and patents it - and wanted to charge $50m per dose. In that case his property rights would place that well within his rights, but eminent domain could have the government force him to give it away, because the cost to society of adhering to property rights in that specific instance is considered too heavy. In this case, if there is a massive cost and resource need to the entire banking system, and Ballard refuses any non-exuberant licensing terms, then eminent domain sounds like a possible way to go.
I wouldn't however object to eminent domain being used and then a one-off tax being levied on all the banks using the technology. That means less time spent by engineers switching out machines for no good reason when they could do things that really benefitted people.
Wow. Even if they give the banks immunity, what would happen to those companies that provide cheque processing services to banks?? Or those such as NCR that actually provide the imaging equipment?? For instance, Fiserv Inc. operates over 50 centers worldwide doing item processing and archiving for upwards of 1700 client organisations. I worked for the Australian division which provides item processing and archiving services for 3 of the 4 largest banks here, and for one of those banks before we were outsourced. Banks here have been doing electronic exchange under the auspices of the Australian Payments Clearing Association since before I started in 2002. Trust me, they don't exactly need an increase in costs right now due to a patent troll.
And that includes 1-click, etc. BofA has a patent on "Keep the Change," an admittedly clever idea,
and so Wachovia has to opt for the less user-friendly: take a dollar on every transaction. (Actually,
they could presumably go for the "X% of the transaction value")
Were that I say, pancakes?
There must be something special about the check 21 aspect of this. We have been scanning and indexing checks in an imaging system and mentioned in the patents, since 1991. We've used ASCII and EBCDIC, Optical Jukeboxes, etc as described by the patent. Some of the checks use overlays so we can save disk space by storing the ASCII text separate from the check image. All of this since 1991.
So what is so special about the Check 21 (check truncation) that warrants a patent?
As an Alabamian, I have to completely agree with this statement. Jeff Sessions (and our other senator, Richard Shelby) are both retarded and corrupt to the depths of their nonexistent souls. If only other people in Alabama had half a fucking clue about how terrible they are we would be a lot better off. Buuuuuut instead we get shafted by putting the same corrupt politicians in power that don't give a damn about their constituents and are only there to pad their wallets. Fucking disgusting...