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How Lobby Groups Rejected the Canadian Government's Plan To Combat Patent Trolls
An anonymous reader writes Michael Geist reports
that according to documents
recently obtained under the Access to Information Act, the Canadian
government quietly proposed a series
of reforms to combat patent trolls including new prohibitions
on demand letters, powers to the courts to stop patent forum
shopping, and giving competition authorities the ability to deal
with patent troll anti-competitive activity. The problem? Business
lobby groups warned against the "unintended consequences" of patent
reforms.
Once again, the Libertarians were correct! Private enterprise has illuminated the correct path through free market mechanics!
I haven't been able to find a job busting kneecaps for corporations since Pinkerton was acquired by Securitas! If we could only get rid of all the government then the lobbyists would pay me instead of representatives and we could go back to the way things should be: a completely free market enforced by goons with baseball bats.
It's bad enough you and your large capitalist empires ruin shit for your own people but when your filthy disease spreads up across our border
i look forward to the fall of your nation when you all grow to fat to support your own infrastructure and society crumbles under its own sense of entitlement.
fuck you so fucking much for this one.
And who are backing them? Maybe they should suffer some very unintended consequences?
What a cute way of saying loss of campaign financing...
The troll problem is far less pronounced in Canada because of differences in how litigation works. It's much easier to sue someone in the US without fear of consequence or cost (besides your own legal fees and time).
Of course established businesses want to keep the current patent situation - they're already big enough to fight patent trolls if they want to.
They want those patent trolls around to eat smaller competition that can't afford the fight.
Kill all the fucking lobbyists.
I'm tired of rich corporations having more say in government than citizens.
Kill the fucking lobbyists. Kill the people who pay for the lobbyists. Smack all politicians who meet with lobbyists about the head with a large stick.
Corporate douchebag motherfuckers are ruining the world to maximize their own profits, while screwing the rest of us over.
Fucking worthless parasites.
The anti-troll measures described in TFA don't sounds to me like they would be particularly effective for most cases. Patent trolls seek out people for whom legal representation is likely to cost as much as a settlement, since those people don't have lawyers on staff and patents are a complicated and specialized field. What the measures would do is provide more opportunities for a lawyer to contest the patent letter. Since the typical targets tend to settle solely to avoid having to pay a lawyer, this will not help. What needs to happen instead is a mandatory notification in the demand letter of certain pieces of evidence which will automatically avoid patent fees if produced. I'm talking known prior art or existing license agreements, as well as other categories of potentially more complicated evidence to be created. Patent trolls thrive on the over-complication in the law, so the solution to them is to create short circuits to their lawsuits that protect 80% of the innocent without retaining a lawyer.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
Are these concerns listed anywhere? I don't want to assume they're unreasonable or far-fetched without having seen them. Or is "unintended consequences" about as much details as was given during lobbying?
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
The pdf linked in the article mentions a few points. The following is my understanding of what they said. It doesn't represent my opinion.
The commenters generally agreed that patent trolling isn't currently a big problem in Canada. Canadian companies are affected more by US trolls, because the Canadian system already handles it pretty well. Therefore "don't fix it if it ain't broke". Any change will have good and bad consequences, and Canada doesn't need much good consequences.
Universities were given as an example of institutions which do real, valuable research and development, but don't manufacture products. They license their technology, so they are non-practicing entities. How do you legally distinguish a research institution and a company who licenses the results of that work vs a troll?
I happen to know that the vast majority of trolling is done by four companies. Hundreds of thousands of people have patents. The challenge is to target those four needles in a very large haystack. When you're targeting a needle in a haystack, and want to destroy the needle (troll) without harming the hay (inventors etc) you want to use precision tools.
IMHO, These are far too rational for Mr Moore to get past cabinet, as they might be seen as desirable regulation. The politics of the day is to avoid regulating (ie, policing) industry.
They're directly applicable to copyright trolling, by the way, and quite a good idea. I'll suggest that.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
We can't have people give their input on legislation that would affect them! When our legislators are having second thoughts, it must obviously because they are all corrupt! Only publicly financed non-profits and academics should ever be able to comment on legislation!
Something about wanting to influence politics by force or threat of force... something like that...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Seriously, do you propose killing everyone in unions? Everyone who has a pension fund? These "Rich corporations" are merely groups of people. That is ALL they are. A corporation is a group of people. Most of the publicly traded companies are owned in a large part by pension funds. Doesn't sound so good to say that we should kill all the pensioners, does it?