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Comment by hownottowrite | Hacker News Reader

Reference: Speech given by USPTO Director Andre Iancu to the Eastern District of Texas Bar Association https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/10/19/iancu-risk-takers-pate...

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Yikes, thats pretty bad.

In a single brush he dismisses those small business horror stories as “fairy tails”. Not to get to political, but the with the current us political environment it’s not entirely surprising.

Also using last century examples ( IBM and 3com ) is a little strange.

Yes it's amazing that "Intellectual Ventures" and "Myhrvold" don't appear at all in that speech.

It is political. Andrei Iancu did not appear from thin air (nor did Ajit Pai), they are political appointees.

Maybe we don't discuss the proximate cause of the problem for some strategic reason, I don't know. But when we don't, we spiral into unproductive discussions about the innate morality of all patents. Maybe that's good but isn't going to solve anything in the foreseeable future.

And for the record, my biggest worry too is a fatal patent shakedown for my unlaunched startup. Actually I'm surprised the trolls haven't started selling "insurance" given the climate of fear they've created.

That Iancu would travel to the Eastern District of Texas to deliver that speech amounts to trolling of a different variety.

Related: Apple closing physical stores to avoid litigation in the district, thread below. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19226355

I guess that he's playing to the audience.

Maybe some of those attorneys are major Trump supporters.

Or maybe it's just generic hate for plaintiffs' firms. Which primarily support Democrats.

Edit: OK, I'm wrong about plaintiffs' firms. I see that it's trial lawyers, who have traditionally supported Democrats, who have pressed Senate Democrats to oppose legislation to control patent trolls. And that it's Republicans who have spearheaded such legislation.

So why, then, is a Trump appointee playing to patent trolls in the audience in East Texas?

The thing about plaintiffs’ firms is over simplistic. Republicans oppose plaintiffs firms that file consumer lawsuits. Patents by contrast are B2B litigation, and the factions there are different. The anti-patent folks are largely Internet tech companies, who usually support Democrats. Many more “establishment” companies, by contrast, are not so strongly Democrat aligned, are relatively pro-patent. Apple, DuPont, Ford, General Electric, IBM, Microsoft, and Pfizer all opposed further watering down of the patent system after the AIA was passed in 2013.

Thanks. I'm mostly familiar with plaintiffs firms doing public-interest class tort and antitrust. And there, memorial photos with Clinton and Obama were the norm.

Patent trolling has been around well before trump came into office. Id argue the two have very little to do with each other.

It's not like America just went bad suddenly when trump got elected. We've had issues like this for a very long time. It's just easier to see the corruption now when the guy in charge isn't pretending to be nice like all the other ones.

I agree.

Upon reflection, it's more that Andrei Iancu is being quoted out of context. The featured quote is:

> "Remarkably, in what I believe amounts to Orwellian ‘doublespeak,’ those who’ve been advancing the patent troll narrative argue that they do so because they are actually pro-innovation. That by their highlighting, relentlessly, the dangers in the patent system, they actually encourage innovation. Right!"

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