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Why United States Patent Reform Has Stalled
ectoman (594315) writes Proponents of patent reform in the United States glimpsed a potential victory late last year, when the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3309, the Innovation Act, designed to significantly mitigate patent abuse. Just months ago, however, the Senate pulled consideration of the bill. And since then, patent reform has been at a standstill. In a new analysis for Opensource.com, Mark Bohannon, Vice President of Corporate affairs and Global Public Policy at Red Hat, explains three reasons why. "For this year, at least," he writes, "the prospect of addressing abusive patent litigation through Congressional action is on ice"—despite the unavoidable case for reform.
The article seems to explain what is [not] happening, not why. But I thought we already knew why. It's called the influence of money on politics.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
People I disagree with?
That's what we're going to do in here, right?
When there is money to be made in perpetuating the problem?
Thirty four characters live here.
I patent the use of the letter E on the internet.
Cost is $0.0060 per use
Send payments to Happy Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield USA.
Here is the problem.
The Right Wing Media has done such a good job a painting the Democrats and Obama as pure Evil, is that any sign of working with the Democrats on anything is a sign that they are being manipulated. So these politicians cannot dare to do anything that will make Obama side considered a win. As if they did they will get voted out in the next primaries.
The Left Wing Media makes the Right Wing like they are so out of touch and evil, so the Right feels constantly threatened, thus makes their stance more resolved.
This degree of Polarization has gone to the Crazy level.
Simple common sense solutions will not go threw because it was the other side who came up with it first.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That's really all you need to say. Nothing has strangled the United States more than its own legal system.
the DMCA outlaws innovation in this country. We wont move forward until it is repealed.
I know the USA's banking system is backward, but even so that check was slooooow to clear.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Money buys policy in the US, and patent holders have more money. Did we really even need this question?
I've already patented the alphabet (lower and upper case!) so please redirect your payments to
Sorry Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield USA.
I'll give you $0.0003 for every $0.0060 you collect.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
I think you'll find that avoiding that particular symbol is fairly straightforward.
"This was entirely done by the pharmaceutical industry and the trial lawyers."
...
Pharmaceutical and biotech firms are often plaintiffs in patent disputes and haven't been hit hard by troll lawsuits.
...
Many law firms working in traditional plaintiffs' areas like personal injury or securities class actions have added patent work as other sources have dried up.
Fucking. Lawyers.
Patents in the USA are a monopoly granted by the Constitution and laws that follow in order to provide a way for inventors to make money for a limited time, then depositing the idea in the public domain so others can manufacture the product or use the idea to expand upon it. It's all about encouraging innovation, because without a patent system, there'd be no incentive to do so and the inventor would have to find other jobs.
Patent Reform is not a particularly partisan issue. Other websites say that Harry Reid killed patent reform, on the behalf of trial lawyers (a major democrat constituent), and big pharma. I think conservatives could be won over with the argument that moderately paid engineers working for the patent office, could replace expensive patent lawyers.
So once people say we will limit "abusive patent litigation" what does that mean?
You worked for 5 years to solve a particular problem and found a unique way to solve it and successfully got a patent or two or three on your solution.
Should the government now come in and pass a law that says "Bud, you can't sue to get patent royalties?"
That takes away your asset value, does it not? How do you define "abusive"? Is it only when you sue a Fortune 500 company? Is it only when 20 other patent holders sue a particular company? Or is it only when those companies have lots of lawyers to lobby the US Congress?
Answer the questions!
Someone or someones in the Senate have fatter wallets right now. I can guarantee it.
While it's no doubt fun to rail against Big Pharma and Greedy Trial Attorneys, Occam's Razor still holds true.
The piece of the proposed legislation that would have made the most meaningful real-world change in the system was making it easier to collect attorney's fees from losing parties that had taken unreasonable positions in the litigation (e.g., trolls). After the Supreme Court expanded the trial courts' ability to do just that in the Octane Fitness and Highmark cases a few weeks ago, that naturally took a significant amount of wind out of the legislative sails.
The legislative appetite to Just Do Something diminishes quite a bit when the playing field has materially changed and there's not yet any data on how much of the problem was curbed by that change.
I'm a state legislator in New Hampshire. We don't have this problem. Our legislative rules require ALL bills to be considered both in committee AND by the full body - committee chairmen don't get to act as "gatekeepers" , and the majority party's leadership can't simply "pull bills" with procedural moves.
At the beginning of 2012, we wrote and passed an emergency bill for a school district, walked it across the hallway to the Senate which then passed it, and walked it up the hallway to the Governor. The entire process took about 3 hours.
It's possible for government to be efficient and effective.
Just not usually in Washington......
With all the lobbying going on in Congress it's no wonder that their approval rating is in the dumps. This is another example of something getting held up in committee rather than being submitted for a vote. The committees control everything in congress and if the chairman decides to pull a piece of legislation they can pretty much do it. In this matter the Republican controlled House passed legislation but the Democratic Senate is caught in its own red tape. NPEs are a threat to our economic development and certainly there are an over abundance of useless, frivolous patents that have been awarded. Regrettably the US Patent system has let us all down in letting these things become a "patent" and unfortunately unless there's litigation it never can be settled. NPEs don't want to go to trial, they want you to settle, pay them their protection money. It's like the Mafia and paying for protection but unfortunately in this case you have multiple gangs all coming to your door asking for their cut. Literally it's like the death of 1000 cuts.
Since I'm not in Vermont, can somebody there kick their Senator in the nuts for me? Thanks.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
having screwed half the planet up already, the US Govt is screwing up tech too for everyone else .. thanks..
I posted an article describing the "why" a month ago. Totally not surprised that the current reform efforts exhibited the same arc.
That general model is exactly why this initiative collapsed as well. Several aspects of this reform - such as "attributable owner" rules, i.e., implementing laws that require patent applications to reveal the real party of interest in the case, as a measure addressing shell companies - were supported by large interests that benefited from them, and opposed by large interests that didn't. The result is stalemate, just as we've seen countless previous times in the patent "reform" discussion.
The only measures that make it through the "reform" system are mild improvements that don't affect some entities differently than others. And even those can be difficult - e.g., the first-to-file change in the America Invents Act is great for well-funded enterprises, but more problematic for small businesses. In that case, large enterprises simply steamrollered the opposition with lobbying cash.
The upshot is that the "reform" sytem is, itself, deeply dysfunctional. An additional tragedy is that efforts that would objectively improve the patent system for everyone, such as giving examiners more time to perform their examination and implementing more accountability for technically incorrect arguments, get lost in the struggle.
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
I do not like the republicans, and if McCain was president we might be living in a radioactive desert fighting over the last can of dog food. But, the tech companies in Silicon Valley just found out what many other industries have learned over decades. The Democratic Party will always, without exception, vote in a manner favorable to trial lawyers. They may pay lip service to tort reform (including patents), but in the end, the huge contributions from trial lawyer associations is money well spent and somehow, reform fails. If it were not for the Republican politicians, the Democrat politicians would be the worst people in the world.
Tea party obstruction of nearly any and all things.
Very eloquently spoken, sir. Unfortunately I think that the conflict over patent reform is due not to disagreement about what is the best way to govern progress and invention for the good of the inventor and society. It seems to be a debate between people who want a fair system, and people who think that they need to fuck over everyone in order to get a larger share of of profits in return for doing nothing. (I'm looking at you, defensive patent portfolio holders)
1000 years ago, those with the biggest armies ruled. Now those with the most lawyers rule. This is progress.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
"edumacated" by Jon Stewart or similarly dishonest/ignorant propagandists. The bill was killed (along with hundreds of other bills the Republican House has passed during the Obama years) by Democrat Senator Harry Reid (Senate majority leader). The DEMOCRATS run the Senate.
Furthermore, while Republican Mitch McConnel did indeed say his number one priority was to make Obama a "one-term president" .... JUST as Democrats said THEY would make Bush a "one term" President. Back in the 80's Democrats insisted they'd make Reaga a "one term" president; that's just normal political posturing. The Republicans did NOT say that they would block any bi-partisan bills, nor have they done so. The Republicans in the House have passed many bills through the House with bi-partisan votes only to see Harry stuff them into his desk drawer and deny them any debate or vote in the Senate. The ONLY people refusing to act in a bi-partisan way are Harry Reid and Barack Obama (who has refused to compromise on ANYTHING with ANY Republicans) .... that's one reason the Obamacare law is so messed-up; Obama and Reid and Pelosi refused to even allow Republicans to be in the room while they wrote the law and negotiated will the insurance companies and drug companies and lobbyists, then in the end they had to pass it using tricks and on a straight party-line vote.
The Republicans even tried sending Obama a law to allow him to do what he is already (illegally) doing (issuing waivers on the ACA) .... and the jerk is SO PARTISAN that he said he'd veto it. Of course, he did not have to veto it ... since Harry Reid ended up promising to stuff it in his desk drawer along with all the other bills he has protected Obama from having to either sign or veto (and then be accountable for his choice).
Where it's all-left all the time, but because it's subtle (EVERY host is a lefty, ALL conversation is premised on lefty ideals and views, and any topic that might be harmful to the left is not reported) you actually think it's unbiased. This is exactly how people exposed to propaganda are SUPPOSED to percieve it; the government-run "information" is, by design, SUPPOSED to appear to be unbiased reality. Pravda played the same game.
The right does not feel threatened because there are some guys on the radio calling liberals names..... the right feels threatened because:
1. President Obama has used the IRS, the FBI, the ATF, and more, to attack them
2. The Democrats rammed Obamacare through, hijacking the healthcare of all citizens (robbing millions of the insurrance and doctors they HAD) and establishing a new principle that government can order each citizen to buy particular products.
3. President Obama is flagrantly breaking all the laws he feels like breaking; He explicitly violated federal law on the Bergdahl matter, is not enforcing the immigration laws, and his attourney general has been obstructing justice and hiding documents from congress instead of enforcing the laws.
4. The President keeps threatening gun control, and seems to have tried back-handed schemes to implement it (Fast & Furious, huge shortage-inducing ammunition buys, etc)
5. The president is trying to use government to force people to violate their most-important convictions - demanding that conservative pro-lifers pay for abortions
6. The courts have gone insane... pretending to not know what basic words mean, and declaring evil (homosexuality) to be good and good (Judeo-Christian principles) to be evil..
7. The President has DOUBLED the national debt ... and that money MUST eventually be paid by SOMEBODY (and that somebody will NOT be the Wall St Bankers who funded Obama's election, it will be middle-class Americans)
I could go on, but for anybody on the right, Obama has been the single most divisive and decietful man to ever hold the Presidency. Remember: Obama actually used the IRS to attack the TEA Partiers (not the GOP but a part of the "right")... but in the seventies the Democrats tried to impeach Nixon for TALKING about using the IRS to go after his enemies. Democrats USED to call Nixon's actions EVIL but now they embrace those actions, just as Democrats USED to be anti-homosexual but now are pro. In only about a decade, Democrats have flipped thier positions on MANY things and now demand that Republicans are bad guys for holding positions all Americans had very recently.
The TEA Party does not hold a majority in any legilative body, nor does it hold any executive positions - the TEA Party has NO ability to stop anything.
Did the TEA Party stop Obama's almost $1 Trillion dollar "stimulus" law? Nope. Obama borrowed and spent a lump-sum of money far larger than any president in US history.
Did the TEA Party stop Obamacare? Nope. The Dems rammed-it through on a party-line vote.
Did the TEA Party de-fund ANYTHING? Nope. The Republicans in the House last November briefly gave the president all the money needed to run all the government excpet Obamacare... he refused the money and he shut the government down. The the cowardly Republicans panicked and offered him all the mony to run government INCLUDING Obamacare but with a waiver on the penalties on some americans for Obamacare penalties... but Obama kept the government shut and the GOP caved-in ... they gave him all the money with "no strings attached"
What, EXACTLY, in your fevered imagination, has the TEA PArty obstructed?????? The only way you could believe the TEA Party has blocked anything is if you are a complete idiot who only gets his news from extremist left-wing propaganda outlets who are always looking for boogeymen to blame for Obama's failures and general incompetence. You guys who get your "reality" from Jon Stewart, Bill Mahr, Arianna Huffington, and Kos are just pathetic and thoroughly uninformed.