Senator Leahy on Bilski - "it's time for Congress to act" on patent reform | Hacker News Reader

Senator Leahy on Bilski - "it's time for Congress to act" on patent reform

leahy.senate.gov

37 pointsgrellas12 comments

Follow the money: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N0000...

He gets lots of money from those that would benefit from broader patents.

If just the folks reading this forum were to write a snailmail letter to their congressman it would likely have a significant effect. The value of a non-form/non-crazy-rant letter is something like ntimes greater than an email, n being somewhere over 50.

"reform" is often code for "we didn't screw it up enough last time". Other times it's code for "we're hungry and they haven't fed us recently".

Patent reform would be best, but just changing the incentive system would do a world of good. IIRC the patent office is funded partly by fees, giving it motivation to quickly grant patents. Declining patents throws a monkey wrench into the revenue stream. Examiners get lower evaluations if they do too much of this. Fix it by changing the funding, fining for denied claims. Give bonus points to examiners who deny patents/claims.

Citations needed: jump in if you have fresher knowledge.

Bonuses to deny claims? Doesn't that swing the incentives the opposite way? I bet there are plenty of reasons somebody could come up with to deny any given patent. But some of them are genuinely valuable inventions and deserve protection. So I'm not sure this is the right path.

You are right of course. The trick is to move the incentives to get the desired result. If the system is fundamentally chaotic, a simple tweak would result in all claims being denied. Or 90% of all patents being denied would probably not be a bad thing. If OTOH, the system is quasi-stable, correcting the incentives would remove the aberrations. Incentives tend to push the results to conform to incentives. But I also believe that it a fallacy to expect predictable results from a social system, thereby contradicting my above assertion.

Interesting how political language today often uses phrases like "it's time act".

What this doesn't say is "act how?". Finally eliminate software patents? Shore them up?

The announcement is remarkably opaque on either what he thinks of the issue of software patents or what he intends to do about it.

What's remarkable is that vague calls to undefined actions like this can somehow affect credulity. Apparently the power of meaningless soundbites is enough to provide the image of leadership.

> needlessly left the door open for business method patents to issue in the future, and I am concerned that it will lead to more unnecessary litigation.

He's against business method patents.

I have nothing against Sen. Leahy personally but given the state of our democracy I assume he means it's time for the lobbying bidding war to start so we can figure out which corporations and interests get to write the new law. He doesn't have any specifics because he hasn't been told what to do yet.

Ah...

I think you've hit the nail on the head here... I'd donate points from my parent to this comment if I could...

Actually, he seems to have a firm position:

"Innovation has been impeded in recent years by a patent system that too often grants low-quality patents with overly broad claims, which have been used by opportunists to extort royalty fees from manufacturers — particularly in the high-tech sector. The problem of low-quality patents is exacerbated by a litigation system that yields unpredictable and often overcompensating damages determinations, which divert investment and resources from innovation."

"This new legislation contains a combination of provisions that will improve patent quality; will provide a more efficient mechanism for administratively challenging the validity of patents; and will provide more discipline and certainty in damages calculations and willfulness determinations. The patent system relies on high-quality patents. Patents with overly broad claims or inventions that are obvious and not truly novel impede innovation and unfairly cast doubt on the validity of those that are high-quality."

From http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34722.html

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