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Has the Supreme Court Made Patent Reform Legislation Unnecessary?
An anonymous reader writes: As Congress gears up again to seriously consider patent litigation abuse—starting with the introduction of H.R. 9 (the "Innovation Act") last month—opponents of reform are arguing that recent Supreme Court cases have addressed concerns. Give the decisions time to work their way through the system, they assert. A recent hearing on the subject before a U.S. House Judiciary Committee (HJC) Subcommittee shined some light on the matter. And, as HJC Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a long-time leader in Internet and intellectual property issues, put it succinctly in his opening remarks: "We've heard this before, and though I believe that the Court has taken several positive steps in the right direction, their decisions can't take the place of a clear, updated and modernized statute. In fact, many of the provisions in the Innovation Act do not necessarily lend themselves to being solved by case law, but by actual law—Congressional legislation."
you owe me 10000000 tiriion dollars for the electric motor .. assholes
Sounds good in theory, but the deep pockets can still push an inventor into bankruptcy by challenging a patent. This doesn't protect the little guy at all.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
You're not even a little bit fearful that "patent reform" isn't doublespeak for bringing patents more inline with copyrights or some such nonsense?
I'm not. Patent term has only ever been extended once, to comply with an international treaty (the Paris Convention on Intellectual Property), and even then, it was a negligible change (20 years from filing, given an average 3 year delay from filing to issuance vs. 17 years from issuance). Compare that to copyright getting extended every time someone blinks.
There's a simple reason for this. The people pushing for longer copyright terms are the publishers who want to commercially exploit their property for as long as possible, and they've got tons of money; the people pushing for shorter copyright terms are... the public. And we have no lobbying money. So, it's an easy guess as to which one wins.
But patent is different - Apple wants their patents to last a long time, but they want Microsoft's to last a short term, and vice versa. Unlike copyright, where you don't really get Sony Pictures wanting to make a Paramount screenplay without paying royalties, you actually do have tons of large companies wanting to use each other's patents. No one wants longer terms, because all of their competitors have patents they want to use. So, there's no pile of lobbying money pushing on just one side of that equation, and patent terms don't get extended.
Disclaimer: I am a patent attorney. But the above should make sense regardless of your opinion of my work.
OK, but then patent reform was never suggested by anyone to be Entire Legal System Reform. It would be impossible to change that fact without completely remaking the legal system.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Enlightened self interested wins every time.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Given that the anti-reform assholes are yelling that patent reform is no longer necessary (because of the court decisions) it should be very apparent that reform is more necessary than ever. i.e. They wouldn't be saying it isn't needed if it won't make a difference.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
The main complaint about the patent reform bill is that it institutes a "loser pays" system that will make it impossible for small inventors to bring suit against large corporations. The AIA (the last reform bill) already substantially increased the cost that individual inventors had to pay to be able to sue large corporations.
What "small inventors"?
The cost to file a patent is already so high that small inventors do not ever patent anything. It's a total waste of time to try and protect them because they are a class of people who simply do not exist at all.
A far bigger problem is when small companies, say ones with five or six employees, are sued for patent infringement. They can't afford to defend themselves even if they don't infringe on the patent. If you could rack up millions of dollars defending yourself and have the patent holder be forced to pay your legal fees if the court rules that you did not infringe on their patent, then that would be quite an improvement. Then lawyers would be willing to work pro bono in patent defence lawsuits.