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US Senate Targets Patent Trolls
New submitter jeffkoch writes: Last year, the United States Senate failed to pass bipartisan legislation to combat patent trolls when it was killed by then-Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Congressional-insider newspaper Roll Call reports today that, "Knowing Reid would no longer control the Senate's legislative schedule in 2015, staff for John Cornyn, (a Republican from Texas), and Charles E. Schumer, (a Democrat from New York)", began work in February to assemble a new bill and to build support among fellow members of the Senate. Patent law is usually not a partisan issue, and President Barack Obama has called for getting an overhaul to his desk on several occasions including in his 2014 State of the Union speech. The last overhaul of United States patent law, the America Invents Act, took several years to be developed. The U.S. Congress is likely to act on the proposed legislation before they recess in August. "Patent trolls are taking a system meant to drive innovation and instead using it to stifle job-creating businesses around the country. Main Street stores, tech startups and more are being smothered by the abuse that is all too common in our patent system, and it's time for that to end," Schumer said in a statement. "This bipartisan bill shifts the legal burden back onto those who would abuse the patent system in order to make a quick buck at the expense of businesses that are playing by the rules."
Way to point out the obvious....of course they will.
But the lobbyists on BOTH sides will descend and americans only get to grab the popcorn and watch to see whose corporate money wins.
American "democracy" in action....
Does anyone else care to bet that any bill coming out of the Senate to curb "patent trolls" is going to end up extending patents even longer and basically making the patent system even worse? Does anyone believe that the result of this legislation will be patent law that does a better job of encouraging innovation?
John Cornyn and Chuck Schumer are two of the biggest corporatists in the Senate. They're not looking to make the patent system work better for anyone but their donors. I don't trust them to do anything good when it comes to intellectual property laws.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So over the last week the GOP has bills to make the EPA only regulate based on publicly available science that can be peer reviewed and they are "anti-science".
They now propose a bill to stop patent trolls and are now "big business and anti-little guy".
Now its pointed out how H. Reid refused to do anything and he is the victim of the GOP.
How idiotic are we supposed to be? Seems CLEARLY like one party is trying to improve things and the other is the party of no and false blame for not acting.