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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.
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.
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!
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.
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"
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.
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!