The Story Behind Recent Patent Reform

rmstar writes "In an article titled 'The Spoilsmen: How Congress Corrupted Patent Reform,' Huffington Post reporter Zach Carter takes a look at the story behind the recent patent reform effort. It is an interesting and scary account of just how broken the legislative process is when it comes to intellectual property."

Comments

Re:...when it comes to intellectual property.

[hey!]

Sorry, but how is the Tea Party involved in this story, or are you just spewing rhetoric everywhere?

OK, so you didn't read the article. At issue is an anti-patent troll provision in the bill which only applies to banks, and makes it easy for them to challenge stupid patents. A company that holds a patent on transmitting check numbers over the Internet (I am not kidding) lobbied Tea Party leaders and launched an astroturf campaign targeted at Tea Party members and depicting the provisions as "another bank bailout" (I am not kidding).

As a result, the normally pro-bank Republican party was split, with Tea Party affiliated congressman voting against the anti-patent troll language.

The Democrats are also split on this provision, and the situation there is equally squalid but more complicated. On one side are the Democrats with ties tot he financial industry, of course. On the other are the proverbial strange bedfellows: those with ties to the patent trolls and their lobbyists, and those with ties to high tech industries opposed to patent trolls but afraid that a special provision for the financial industry would weaken a future bid to get the same deal for themselves.

This all takes place in the context of a longer term fight between High Tech and Big Pharma, which is a bit like the TMBG song "Particle Man". High Tech doesn't like the status quo because it makes it difficult if not impossible to create a product like a smartphone without tripping over some crazy patent. Big Pharma, which doesn't have this problem (it sells and patents molecules), likes the status quo. They had a fight and Pharma won, so finance stepped in to get the things High Tech wanted, but only for themselves so they wouldn't have to fight Pharma too.

That in turn takes place in the context of international trade treaties the US has signed that aren't very consistently observed, but give a convenient monkey wrench to throw into the reform works for anyone who prefers the status quo. Despite this, the banking industry was able to get its reforms (which are reasonable except that they only apply to the banks) passed in the Senate, only for the Tea Party to split the Republican support in the House.

So to conclude: across the board reform targeting stupid patents is blocked by Big Pharma. Industry targeted reform is difficult to pass because of treaty obligations, and High Tech doesn't have the clout to make it happen. The banks had enough clout to get industry specific reform into a bill, but where shot down by Tea Partiers who were sold a framing of the issue by the patent trolls that was even dumber than the patents the trolls wanted protected.

The upshot is that the only patent "reform" we're going to get is to make the system more favorable to large companies and less favorable to small ones. Apparently that's the one thing all our legislators can agree upon.