Financial services industry given special powers to fight patents | Hacker News Reader

Financial services industry given special powers to fight patents

dealbook.nytimes.com

57 pointsmoondistance15 comments

The comment I posted to NYTimes:

The motivation for this legislation actually passes the common sense test: it's absurd that there is only one company in the country allowed to process scanned checks. But a law that excuses the financial industry from business method patents is not the correct solution.

Any industry can be subject to this kind of absurd restriction. Financial services just happens to be the first industry where business method patents were invented. Some industries, like programming, are even more heavily affected.

The correct solution is to eliminate business method patents for EVERYONE.

This makes the cynical parts of my brain howl with laughter. Apparently problems with the law aren't real problems until they inconvenience rich white financiers!

I mean, if they end up throwing out business-method patents, I'm all for it, but it's very sad that this is yet another political problem whose legislative resolution will be completely unrelated to the merits of the issue. One would prefer a resolution where the best arguments, not the deepest pockets, win an argument.

Don't be fooled by the current hate towards wall street (not that they don't deserve it). As far as I can tell this legislation would actually be a good thing.

Just read the part of the bill in question at http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h1249/show. I didn't see anything specific to the financial industry in there. Even assuming some nefarious special interest bankrolled the provision (section 18), it still sounds sensible to me. I think it just makes it easier to challenge "business method" patents. As far as I'm concerned the whole notion of a business method patent is utterly idiotic and counterproductive, economically speaking. So making it easier to challenge business method patents sounds sensible to me.

Seems that this news is being spun against wall street by a concerted lobbying effort: "Not surprisingly, the ever-aggressive plaintiff's bar is bankrolling a major lobbying effort to strip Section 18 from the Senate-passed reform bill when it comes up for a vote on the House floor." http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/judicial/168087-stopp...

Reuters has a shorter piece in favor of the provision. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/07/05/bringing-se...

No, there is no spin needed - this ONLY applies to the financial industry. You didn't read far enough:

(d) Definition- (1) IN GENERAL- For purposes of this section, the term ‘covered business method patent’ means a patent that claims a method or corresponding apparatus for performing data processing or other operations used in the practice, administration, or management of a financial product or service, except that the term does not include patents for technological inventions.

So the financial industry will get a "second chance" to subject business-practice patents to review and possibly get them invalidated. The author and most of the people he quotes are concerned about level of influence that Wall Street has demonstrated over Congress in this case (a concern that I share), but a re-review of business-practice patents seems like a good thing to me. My biggest complaint would be the narrow scope: why limit it to the financial industry? Why not allow a system-wide audit of all business-practice patents, and software patents too?

"a re-review of business-practice patents seems like a good thing to me."

Me too, but not when it's selectively granted. This pork smells bad and should be thrown out.

> Why not allow a system-wide audit of all business-practice patents, and software patents too

I don't think they have that kind of manpower.

This bill doesn't require that the government audit the financial industry business patents, but rather lets the financial industry lawyers challenge the patents in court (currently patents have a presumption of validity that would prevent this in many cases). So it would be Google and Microsoft's lawyers that would be doing this.

> I don't think they have that kind of manpower.

So we give it only to financial services companies :-)

So when will SV companies get together and lobby as a group for software patent review?

I don't know how US politics works, but how can this slip trough without public outrage? I read a lot about things like the birth certificate and abortion. I always thought this is just in the media because your population is more diverse.

Here in Germany Merkel and Ackermann (Deutsche Bank) had one dinner together and there was public outrage and questions from the opposition.

The difference is that in Germany you have at least one party that is not completely in the pocket of the financial industry. We do not.

Why fight against this? Just remove the limiter and apply it to all patents. Especially software patents.

Apparently what is good for the goose is not good for the gander...

The crocodile tears of this article are just disgusting. "Wall Street throwing its weight around" against the biggest entity that is demonstrably more parasitic and demonstrably more unproductive of jobs or well-being for average American; the greasy, blood fattened lamprey's of the intellectual property mafia.

Even as this stands, if it passes, I suspect it will be a very good thing - the thin-edge of a wedge. A situation where "no patent is safe" should inspire ... fewer patents.

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