
A Bad Day for Patent Reform. A Bad Day for Innovation - VanL
http://www.rackspace.com/blog/a-sad-day-for-patent-reform-a-bad-day-for-innovation/
======
larrys
"As recently as last night, we had high hopes that a meaningful reform effort
would move forward this week."

What appears to have _possibly_ happened here, by virtue of the fact that they
appeared to have such high hopes, is that they let up on the battle and effort
banking on what they were told by those they were in contact with. Who may
have been mislead themselves.

I've seen this pattern before and in fact I've used it against adversaries
(not in the patent area obviously). And it was used against me (which I'm
guessing is where I learned it in the first place.)

You allow the other side to think they are going to win and so they end up
easing up just a bit on the effort because in their mind they think they have
pretty much either won the battle or have come real close to winning. (Isn't
this also done in sports?)

I learned this lesson early on in business (out of college) when I lodged a
complaint against the electric company for pulling the power to some
machinery. The electric company immediately told me I was right! And that they
would, in so many words, compensate me for the lost profits and the like (not
that exactly but close enough it was a long time ago).

As time dragged on they still mildly assured me that they were going to do
something. After perhaps 6 months past and I drew a line in the sand (all this
dating is from memory btw.) At that point they finally just told me they
weren't going to do anything and "well to bad sorry".

But by that point I had lost my initial anger and steam and just decided to
forget about it.

Had they told me from day one (or week one) that they didn't agree I would
have approached the situation much differently and mounted a different
strategy. I didn't have a strategy because, well, I didn't think I needed one.

~~~
VanL
No one gave up. There was a "pencils down" compromise agreement between most
parties as of yesterday. It was hard getting there, but it had support from
almost everyone.

The pulled bill was the result of two different forces coming into play: Pro-
IP monetization companies applying pressure and coalition splitting among the
Democratic caucus.

The IP Monetization folks (Trolls, Universities, Bio, PHrMA, old line
industry, and folks like Qualcomm) have been pushing really hard to weaken the
legislation. There were substantial efforts to come to reasonable compromises,
but those groups were never really happy.

What ultimately killed it, though, is that there were some important special
interest groups (notably the trial lawyers) who opposed any kind of reform. If
the bill would have been brought to the floor, it would have split the
Democratic coalition and made a bunch of big-money donors mad.

When the opposition from the IP Monetization group mixed with the
destabilizing political effect, the Senate Democratic leadership decided to
kill it.

~~~
rayiner
> Trolls, Universities, Bio, PHrMA, old line industry, and folks like
> Qualcomm)

That encompasses like 90% of the broader tech/engineering/R&D sector. If so
much of the sector opposes reform, then reform won't be possible without
getting more of these folks to switch sides. I think sensible reform is
possible without prejudicing the interests of most of those folks. Its a
matter of conveying that to them.

~~~
VanL
The anti-reform group is basically people who make a living licensing patents.
Everyone else (Google, Cisco, Amazon... pretty much anyone doing anything over
the internet, anyone using computers or networks, all three auto makers, the
app developers, anyone in phones) mostly was pro reform.

What made the coalition for reform though, was the non tech industry. Retail,
the Chamber of Commerce, banks, grocers, restauranteurs, hoteliers, gaming,
insurance, venture capital... Basically everyone else. The pro-reform group
was called the big tent for a reason.

This was about a smallish number of companies wanting to extract profits from
other companies, and using the brokenness of the patent system to do so.

No one would have objected of there was a sense that the allegations were fair
or well-founded. The problem is that courts would _by statute_ try to uphold
claims that were ridiculous.

Patent suits are the spam of the court system - spam you have to pay to
delete.

~~~
rayiner
The Partnership for American Innovation, which is basically an anti-reform
group, includes Apple, Microsoft, IBM, DuPont, Pfizer, GE, and Ford. These are
old-line American engineering companies, and make a living selling products,
not licensing patents. They're synonymous with innovation (and STEM job
creation) to your average Congresscritter. Reform is going to be difficult
without getting more of these sorts of companies on the other side. The
computer/internet folks have a very legitimate platform, but the coalition is
too thin.

------
tzs
Almost all troll activity I've noticed has been around software patents or
business method patents, and generally involves patents that should not have
been issued in the first place.

I'd rather see reform that either eliminates software patents, or provides the
patent offices the resources to come up with a way to examine software patent
applications sufficiently to stop issuing bad software patents.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
As far as I can tell nearly all software patents are bad software patents. If
you can infringe a patent by accident having never heard of the patent holder
or their so-called invention, that should be pretty strong evidence that the
patent is excessively abstract or claiming something obvious. But that's the
entire patent troll business model. There are zero people going through their
inscrutable patent applications to find inventions to use and then infringing
them on purpose. If you got rid of all the bad software patents there would be
hardly anything left. Because hardly anybody infringes on purpose so nobody
even bothers to apply for software patents that no one would infringe by
accident.

I think it's the nature of the field. Patenting a specific way to do something
in software is completely useless because there are always many different
reasonable ways to achieve the same result. The only software patents that
have value are the ones that are unreasonably broad because anything narrower
can be easily avoided.

------
guimarin
This is hardly surprising though. The current democratic leadership is full of
double-talkers and the republicans are completely owned by special interests.

The only way to get something done would be to throw more money at lobbyists
than content and pharma. But that is not likely as in Pharma's case the
current system is what keeps them in business. Gov't pays for research, pharma
picks it up, hides the flaws, markets it to the public then heavily markets
against themselves when their patents expire. No sonny, this is regulatory
capture at its finest and if you care about software/technology patent reform
you have to figure out how to reframe the debate so protected and well funded
industries are no longer effected.

~~~
bnolsen
you must live in some wierd fantasy world, but sorry the dems are totally
owned by special interests. some of the old guard republicans are also
similar.

follow the money, the dems reek of special interest.

~~~
georgemcbay
Both parties are almost completely owned by special interests at this point
(in many cases by the same special interests!), though there are a few
"exceptions that prove the rule" on either side of the aisle.

It makes me laugh when someone with ideological allegiance to one side or the
other points out how corrupt the "other guys" are and either disingenuously
doesn't mention or just plain stupidly doesn't notice the same problem for
those on their "side".

This is a big part of the reason I support MayOne
([https://mayone.us](https://mayone.us)). The odds are stacked against them,
but meaningful and broad campaign finance reform is the only thing that is
going to fix the now incredibly broken US government and give non-corporations
any meaningful voice in future legislation, and I have yet to see any better
plan on how to make it happen.

