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Comment by ambler0 | Hacker News Reader

I'm confused about this part: "While Tuesday’s rulings appear to be good news for patent reform advocates, they also raise the question of whether they might undercut a major patent bill that is slated to be debated in the Senate on Thursday."

Anyone with knowledge of this care to explain?

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IANAL, but I think this is more a political comment: the motivation for the upcoming patent bill was (partially) that existing law is too troll-friendly and needs to be fixed; but if the SC has clarified the existing law to be less troll-friendly, then it's not as important to reform the law.

I'm reminded of an Atlantic article I recently read about the Warren Court in the 60s---by deciding one case on extremely narrow procedural grounds rather than on the merits, the court left a "this needs to be fixed" motivation that gave political room for the Civil Rights Act.

The best way to get the Senate to make patent reform a priority is a Samsung-induced sales injunction on iPhones. The outrage would be immediate, and we'd have this resolved in weeks instead of years or decades (if we ever do "resolve" it).

Unfortunately, I don't think such an injunction is in the cards. It would hit home enough in that it'd inconvenience them personally, which would spur immediate action.

Didn't a lesser version of this already happen and Obama decided to let Apple have a free pass?

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100937213

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