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Who Helped Kill Patent Troll Reform In the Senate
First time accepted submitter VT-802-Software (3663479) writes "A bipartisan proposal to curb patent trolls was shelved by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Wednesday. 'Supporters of the compromise accuse trial lawyers, universities, pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies for foiling the plan at the eleventh hour. As late as Tuesday, the University of Vermont and a biotech coalition each sent letters to Leahy opposing the legislation. "We believe the measures in the legislation go far beyond what is necessary or desirable to combat abusive patent litigation, and would do serious damage to the patent system," reads one of the letters. "Many of the provisions would have the effect of treating every patent holder as a patent troll."'"
Somehow, someone failed to omit the (D) that time.
A big moment for Slashdot.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
"Many of the provisions would have the effect of treating every patent holder as a patent troll."'"
Oh but when it comes to regular citizen being treated like suspects because of a few rotten apples then thats ok but forbid this would happen to big money holders.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
As long as lawyers are the majority of legislators you'll never see real patent *or* torte reform. End of story.
Stories are circulating that Harry Reid is the one who exerted pressure on Lahey to pull the bill.
Reid is as corrupt as they come.
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
Supporters of the compromise accuse trial lawyers, universities, pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies for foiling the plan at the eleventh hour.
Lawyers? They suck. Pharmaceutical and biotech companies? Boo! Universities? Horr- wait, what?
If universities are opposed to the law, then that means that it probably defines "troll" as any non-practicing entity or those who make their income from licensing and litigation rather than sale of products, and therefore implicates research universities like MIT, Johns Hopkins, and Cornell. And yeah, if the law is going to force them to abandon some of their research efforts, then it's a bad law. Patent trolls are a problem, but they need a targeted solution, not one that will damage an entire R&D industry.
For example, one of the big troll-y issues was suing tons of unrelated defendants in a single suit - like Microsoft in Seattle, and Google in Mountain View, and Apple in Cupertino, and Joe Shmoe Consumer in Florida... They had no interest in Joe, he only bought a single product that was alleged to infringe, but by including him, they could argue that Texas was halfway between everyone, so it was a good venue, rather than, say, Northern California. So, in the America Invents Act, they changed the joinder rules and said you could only include multiple defendants if they were explicitly working together to infringe, like subsidiaries or agent/principal relationships. Poof, overnight, Joe stopped getting sued. Good solution: targets the problem perfectly, doesn't harm legitimate inventors.
Actually, your comment is moronic, because it implies that the right thing to do is cut down the tree, by which I assume you mean destroy what's left of the democracy. What do you think will arise in its place? Something better? Read your fucking history. The right thing to do is take this seriously and get active. It's worked in the past, and it will work again. Burning down the house is not the right way to solve this problem.
If they assert that even such tame legislation can harm 'legitimate' patent holder then it's an argument in favor of abolition of patent system altogether, because it's hard to find meaningful difference between 'legitimate' and 'troll' which makes the patent system itself more harmful than useful since any obviously existing abuses run unchecked. Each such successful lobbying effort supports the position of patent/copyright abolitionists like me :P
"Many of the provisions would have the effect of treating every patent holder as a patent troll."
Software should not have been patented, and software patents are indeed not allowed in Europe (although they are lobbying hard to bring the broken US system into Europe).
I am yet to see a software patent which worth the effort of reading and decoding its intentionally unclear text. In the best case they are basically direct applications of unpatentable mathematical knowledge produced by real scientists, and not the inventors mentioned in the patent.
So yes, anybody who uses software patents for litigation or for any other purpose except defending against a troll, is indeed a patent troll.
I'd call American democracy a pretty good prototype of the real thing.
But its just a prototype, and beta ended loooong ago.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Our founders VERY EXPLICITLY did NOT create a Democracy (some of the most-famous like Adams and Franklin cautioned strongly against it). They created a "Constitutional Republic" with "Democratic elections" - Which means we have democratically-elected representatives AND a constitution that protects the political minority from the acts of the political majority (something NOT done in a "Democracy") no matter how much the majority wants to do those acts and votes for them. Our founders warned against forming a Democracy, in part, because all Democracies eventually devolve into tyranny-of-the-majority, financial insolvency, and collapse.
The bigger and more-invasive our government gets, the more it gets into every single aspect of our lives... and the more like a Democracy it becomes, the more it disregards the political minority and FORCES the will of the majority onto them - this can only end in one of two ways: [1] stepping back from this path or [2] a very bloody civil war. It's a sheer flight of fantasy to presume that a huge segment of the nation will simply abandon all its principles and beliefs and allow the majority to dominate (because unlike the first civil war which was over the singular immoral act of slavery - opposed even by half the founders, and designed by the founders to eventually dissappear, this rising national Democracy in the US eventually will force every political minority to cave to the will of the majority on all aspects of life)
Oh, and before some idiot posts links to famous politicians on both sides of the aisle praising "democracy", be fore-warned that those of us who are educated know you are going out-of-context - It was the tradition in the West, particularly during WWII and the Cold War to refer to "representative governments where individual citizens have the right to vote and freely express their opinions" as "democracies" (in contrast to the various forms of oppressive regimes around the globe) as a form of verbal short-hand.
> because one of their biggest financial pillars is the trial lawyers
Only a small minority of lawyers are even allowed to handle these cases.
So using lawyers in general as some kind of bogeyman here shows an extreme level of ignorance and/or an extreme level of contempt for the electorate.
Only the "nerd" contingent of the bar is even allowed to apply for the kind of credential that allows one to practice in this area.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.