Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Mucky Mucks Mount Summit Offensive Against US Patent System

[Congressman] Berman [D-CA] is optimistic about the prospects of getting enough Republican votes to pass a [Patent "Reform"] bill in this year's new Democratic Congress. The tech industry will be thankful if some legislation makes it through soon that would get the sand out of the patent processing gears..
Yup, according to this unbiased report about the invitation-only Tech Policy Summit, the most prestigious leaders of world wide technology have hob nobbed together, looked deeply into the heart of the patent system, spotted its "gears" and found that "the system is broken" because there is sand in the gearbox.

Thank goodness. At least somebody is doing the hard hard quality work of collecting numbers, collecting facts, and arriving at rationalized assessments. You would hate to think that our "leaders" are not paying attention to all the unemotional evidence and instead they are being run rougshod over by the K street mind benders.

According to yet another report:

Congressman Howard Berman from Los Angeles, the chairman of the House of Representatives judiciary subcommittee on courts, predicted that the new Democratic Congress would deal with patent reform during the current legislative session. In an on-stage interview at the Tech Policy Summit with Time magazine national political correspondent Karen Tumulty, Berman noted that the pharma companies have opposed patent reform while the tech companies favor it. Berman said that Republicans in league with the pharma companies here-to-date held up the patent reform bill. But technology and financial services companies joined forces to create a groundswell of support for reform. He said that current patent office practices can be detrimental to innovation and the growth of the economy. He is troubled by business method patents and other frivolous patents such as the Double Click patent. .

Yet another unbiased observer was troubled that the Mucky Mucks were "trying to make patent trolling respectable". Obviously the panel failed to realize that "the current patent system had a chilling effect on patent infringement." My oh my. Something needs to be done about this. We can't have a system that chills infringement! "[N]o one on the panel was willing to note that the patent system all too often represents a net negative to innovation." Some more "dirt" on the Summit can be found here. And here and here.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

More on the summit here (IT world) and here

Anonymous said...

CNBC video here

(If you have problems, click options and turn the video acceleration down)

Step Back said...

Yet another great reason to get rid of the US Constitution: It allows for abuse by those evil "patent" owners as is well documented here with a production of the alleged cease-and-desist letter.

Step Back said...

Way off topic, but still a must see TV event:

An 11 year old out-Holidays the grown ups:
daily motion video

Step Back said...

Well here it is as should have been expected. The tech savvy world believes in "trolls".

What's next? Grimm fairy tales?

Another provision would make it more difficult for so-called patent "trolls" to acquire a patent, claim another company infringed on it and then force the company to pay a settlement in order to keep its business going.

"Patents are not a driver of innovation, they are an impediment to innovation," said Mark Lemley, a professor of law at Stanford University Law School, speaking at the summit.

Step Back said...

We should be proud that clear and rational logic prevails in the UK.

The test used to discern between patentable and non-patentable subject matter in the UK has recently been clarified by the courts, and is applied rigorously by the Patent Office. Under this test, the true nature of the advance being claimed in a patent application must be determined, and if this advance lies solely in the field of software, or another non-technical field such as methods of doing business, the patent will not be granted. If the advance being made by an invention does lie in a technical field, it must also be non-obvious and sufficiently clearly described for the invention to be reproduced before a patent will be granted by the Patent Office.

Thank goodness those Brits don't believe in arbitrary and capricious decison-making --or the notion that the Crown can do no wrong.

Step Back said...

I'm having an interesting heated debate over at Open/Patent Abuse --supposedly with a journalist.

It's over the legitimacy of "software patents" --as such.

Drop in and take a look.

Step Back said...

If only the public knew how evil those patent-owning "trolls" are --read one journalist's views here.

Step Back said...

Read this story and figure out for yourself who Congressman Berman represents.

Does he represent unemployed American CS and Engineering majors (American college students who just got out of school and can't get a job in Computer Science or engineering) or does he represent some other interest? Hmmm.

I know. I know. Don't ask questions. "It's all good." The wealth will trickle down just like honey warm urine.

Step Back said...

The free speech versus patent saga continues here.

Apparently the patent owner is back pedaling on any insinuation that they threatened to sue. I still have not seen the cease-and-desist letter. It would be interesting to see what they actually said in the letter. Does anyone have a copy?