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Who Helped Kill Patent Troll Reform In the Senate

Posted by samzenpus on from the whoever-has-the-most-money dept.

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."'"

11 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Kudos by Tailhook · · Score: 5, Funny

    Somehow, someone failed to omit the (D) that time.

    A big moment for Slashdot.

    --
    Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
    1. Re:Kudos by ATMAvatar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As opposed to what? Some Scientologist teatard? No thanks.

      No. As opposed to Alex Miller, Eduardo Hamilton, or Carlo Poliak

      I must say, though, it was quite amusing that "None of these" got 10% of the vote.

      --
      "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
    2. Re:Kudos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Usually what happens is that when the sponsor of a bill finds in the eleventh hour that they have lost enough support to pass the bill, as is the case here, they will shelve it rather than forcing a losing vote. Doing it this way means that other legislators haven't committed to a position on it, leaving the possibility open to bring it back in the future. The article gives a second reason - if the bill is brought to the floor right now it might not get support from Harry Reid, which would go a long way towards sinking it.

      If you're determined to be pedantic about the word "forced" then you're welcome to pick another. The article does not suggest in any way that Leahy wanted to bill to fail.

    3. Re:Kudos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Because if you bring a bill up for a vote when you know it will fail, then that's the end of the line. Nobody is going to change their vote later... that's flip-flopping and it makes you look bad as a politician.

      Whereas if you shelve it, you can bide your time and try to reestablish the necessary votes.

      In any event, one of the major provisions of the bill was to permit the courts to shift fees onto the plaintiff when they bring frivolous claims. This was uncommon before because Federal Circuit case law made it difficult for trial judges to decide to do this.

      However, a recent SCOTUS case overruled the Federal Circuit case law. It's now believed that more district court judges will shift fees. Because of this recent development, lots of politicians who were going to vote for the bill have probably decided that it's not worth sticking their neck out on a vote if the recent SCOTOS decision will being about much of the effect.

      So most likely the idea is to shelve the bill and wait-and-see what the effect the SCOTUS decision will have on litigation. If it doesn't curtail litigation in the next year or two, then I would expect the bill to be resurrected.

    4. Re:Kudos by mellon · · Score: 4, Funny

      People who generalize are all idiots. And if I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times: nobody likes a person who exaggerates.

  2. Lawyers by dreamchaser · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As long as lawyers are the majority of legislators you'll never see real patent *or* torte reform. End of story.

  3. Re: Mr. Lahey is a drunk bastard and always will b by JWW · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...

  4. Supporters of the plan accuse... by Theaetetus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Supporters of the plan accuse... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Meh. Universities seem like part of the problem. They take public funds to pay for research and patent the results. If my tax dollars are paying for research, I want to share in the rewards rather than having the profits privatized to pay for some litigious university IP department.

    2. Re:Supporters of the plan accuse... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Research is not the same as patents. The race to earn patents as a way of funding University research is corrupting University research by making Universities into unpaid R&D divisions for the private sector. That's a big part of the reason you don't have things like Bell Labs any more; they've been outsourced so that governments pay for a lot of the infrastructure by paying for the Unviersity.

      It's not Universities that are opposed to fixing the patent system. It's the people in Universities right now who make their money by being invested in the current corrupt patent system. Universities, as they should be, would not be serving as subsidised corporate R&D and filing patents.

    3. Re:Supporters of the plan accuse... by Crypto+Gnome · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You, sir, are a complete IDIOT!,

      The money that universities make off their patents doesn't go into the pockets of some mysterious investor but BACK INTO FUNDING THE UNIVERSITY.

      As a direct result of being able to profit from their patented research universities can afford to do more (or more expensive) research without having to dip into TAX DOLLARS to do so.

      --
      Visit CryptoGnome in his home.