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White House May Name Patent Reform Opponent As New Head of Patent Office
An anonymous reader writes The Obama Administration is set to appoint Phil Johnson, a pharmaceutical industry executive, as the next Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, according to sources. The move is likely to anger patent reform advocates given Johnson's past efforts to block legislation aimed at reining in patent trolls, and in light of his positions that appear to contradict the White House's professed goal of fixing the patent system. The top job at the Patent Office has been vacant for around 18-months since the departure of previous director David Kappos in early 2013. Currently, the office is being managed by former Googler Michelle Lee, who was appointed deputy director in December. Earlier this month, Republican Senators led by Orrin Hatch (R-UT) sent a letter to President Obama that praised Lee but that also described the current USPTO management structure as "unfair, untenable and unacceptable for our country's intellectual property agency."
Is anybody surprised? Claim to support Net Neutrality and give the power to the Cable lobby. He's done this before and he'll do it again. Hypocrite-in-chief.
At first I was fooled. Copyrights. Patents. Guantanamo Bay. What is it with this guy.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
It seems like no matter what Obama says, he continues to appoint lobbyists with clear conflicts of interest to important positions rather than actually think about his choices. First it was Tom Wheeler at the FCC, and now a lobbyist and executive for Big Pharma in charge of patents. What causes him to keep doing this?
It seemed odd that only posts I see on this subject ("Classic Obama", "Obama ... What is it with this guy", and "Why does Obama keep doing this") all seem to suggest this hypocrisy is somehow unique to the current president.
Maybe I'm missing something as I was born in '88, was there a time when politicians weren't appointing people based on who would be best for the major corps in the industry.?How is this anything but the standard Corruption which we can expect from all future presidents?
This is a very dark development. ... after a 3 year delay .. a loophole in the law kicks in (basically they use 35 USC 135 (c) to trigger 35 USC 156 (a) ) and so they get 20 years from issuance date subtract 18 months until the patent expires. Their goal is to delay the patent issuance until the final quickly issued patent is about to expire .. then they will get the patent office to issue the new patents (the deliberately delayed ones). This allows them extended monopoly/royalties on LTE technology. This tactic is widely used. For example there are still patents from HDTV in the 1990s that have still not been issued. The patent law was changed in the early 90s to "prevent submarining" .. but a loophole was placed in there intended for pharmaceutical companies (cause FDA drug approvals can take a decade so it's unfair that they only get 10 years of monopoly).. but the problem with the loophole is that everyone else (non-pharmaceuticals) can use it too.
The patent system is being abused such that it is preventing product launches and stifling innovation/invention by anyone other than large entities. For example, let's look at what's happening with LTE. Currently corporations are submarining many of these patents so that it will be impossible to make a non-infringing LTE base station or smartphone even 30 years after most of the currently known LTE patents expire. Not all the patents on LTE are even known (this is deliberate so that lawsuit can be filed at a later date). Anyway, what do I mean by submarining? They filed some of these applications years ago and then saw to it that SOME the patents have not issued (while a few are issued)
This appointment needs to be protested properly.
"The guy we elected was smart, charismatic, capable, articulate; he ran a brilliant campaign that took out the heavily favored Hilary Clinton. He came across as a man with the intelligence, principles, and pragmatism to fix the nations problems"
I'm going to type something that will seem a slam against Obama, but that's really not my point (I'm not a fan of most politicians), read the whole post:
Where was the evidence for ANY of that? You were propagandized. All the democrat-run news networks told you he was "brilliant" and you bought it even though he sealed all his academic records (unlike all previous candidates) and you've still never seen them. The same people told you he was "capable" even though he'd never run ANYTHING, never been responsible for ANYTHING, never held a job that required ANY productivity or creativity. Now when he is unable to get things done, he blames the Republicans and those same news outlets help him (even though MOST presidents have had to deal with opponents in congress) Articulate? Have you ever seen him without a teleprompter? Sure all those same biased sources gushed about how "articulate" he was... but what was the true evidence? He stumbles and stutters like crazy without a teleprompter and even uses them to address elementary school kids (liberal Democrats ridiculed VICE Presidential candidate Palin for scribblying several words on her hand before giving a half-hour long speech without teleprompters). Was his campaign over Hillary TRULY "brilliant" or did she run a poor campaign (as she appears to be doing again) and was she jettisoned by a Democrat-leaning press that found a candidate it preferred to support? (Reminders: Hillary claimed the fairest coverage she got in 2008 was on Fox, and Bill is still bitter and said Obama "played the race card" against him and Hillary). As for "good intentions"... as the old saying goes: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". George Bush and his supporters would say HE had "good intentions"...
My point is that people are easily manipulated, and the techniques politicians and their armies of advisors and campaign staff use are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Obama's own team brags about their "mirco-targetting" and other campaign breakthroughs (which, if you THINK about it are all just ways of manipulating people). The problem is made worse when 9 out of 10 journalists in the US have repeatedly admitted to being aligned with the Democrats. When that combined propaganda machine "kicks-in" and works on behalf of one person (no matter the skin color, gender, etc) the population is sadly ill-equipped to see through the marketing smoke screen and ask questions about actual abilities, actual qualifications, etc. Obama had NO applicable resume for the Presidency (and Hillary's was just as thin (former First Lady, and recipient of a donated Senate seat). Those two 2008 candidates did NOT have the qualifications of an FDR, a JFK, a Reagan, and LBJ, etc. and no amount of PR and friendly news coverage could cure it.