Senate decides patent reform is just too much work, waves white flag The US Senate has decided to call off its efforts to rid the US legal system of patent trolls, tabling proposed legislation to overhaul patent law. Senator Patrick Leahy said on Wednesday that he would remove proposed patent legislation from the Senate Judiciary Committee agenda, effectively killing any effort by the Senate to …
"Regrettably, competing companies on both sides of this issue refused to come to agreement on how to achieve that goal."
Let me guess who those companies are:
for the reform: small IT companies (not small IT trolls), FSF, EFF, Linux Foundation, Google, Red Hat, Samsung et al.
against: small trolls, big trolls (Rockstar is one example), Microsoft and Apple (as superlative and extreme forms of a troll) an the like
You need to stop guessing based on personal bias and predudice.
The patent reform bill is supported by 400 companies, you can find their names here:
http://www.patentprogress.org/letters-support-patent-reform/
Apple and Microsoft are both in the "for" camp.
You may now proceed to use congnitive dissonance to downvote this post because we all know that pointing out that Microsoft and/or Apple are not being "evil" is exactly the same as being a mindless fanboi that will buy any old crap they happen to sell.
Not downvoting for you, sorry (unlike you perhaps downvoting my post)
pointing out that Microsoft and/or Apple are not being "evil"
Why were you quoting the word "evil"? I am guessing because you put the relative meaning of it there, didn't you?
Apple and Microsoft are both in the "for" camp.
Is this "for" also supposed to be quoted? If everyone was for, why did this all end up broken? I hope you are not learning it from me, but a more disruptive and destructive efficiency of some idea or cause is achieved when one joins it. So this pretentious "for" does make a perfect sense.
Since, the real facts are:
Microsoft: racketeering most Android manufacturers or/and spreading FUD about their infringed patents never publicly disclosing what these patents are.
Apple: attacking Samsung and others for some ridiculous shape patents with a lunatic idea that "they invented everything"
Rockstar: it's not enough for both of them what they achieve individually, so they combine their trolling forces and greed to attack more successful competitors. Plus it's better and more secure to use proxies instead of engaging in more face-to-face, straightforward and open-field attacks. Maybe, so they could join the party for the reforms to better ensure its destruction.
As I inferred, and you have ignored, I am not standing up for Microsoft and Apple per se (or is that too pretentious as well?). I was simply pointing out that your assertion that Apple and Microsoft are against the reform is incorrect.
The "for" was quoted (like that) because, during my educational years, it was the convention to write "for" and "against" when referring to the arguments. You may think of it as a non-verbal tick if you wish.
I wrote "evil" because it is the convention within the comments of The Register to refer to companies as evil when they do something that hurts the delicate sensibilities of the gentle readers. Evil is a concept that is in itself open to a broad debate, but ascribing moral values to any given company is simply pointless and serves no useful purpose; once you have decided a company is "evil", then you are highly unlikely to take a balanced view of any activity they undertake.
Hence, whenever Apple wins a court case there are people in this forum who are absolutely convinced that they only won because the case was held in America or because Apple had paid off the judge and/or jury.
The patent system (in the USA) is broken because when the law was created it simply didn't occur to anyone that the entities we now refer to as "patent trolls" might come into existence and mess everything up.
Meanwhile, a disquieting message on your cereal box:
Real Median household income peaked way back in 1999 at $56,000 and by 2012 it was down 9%—an unprecedented decline. It goes without saying that Washington’s Keynesian ministrations on the money printing and national debt front didn’t much help.
In fact, the Fed’s balance sheet has expanded from $450 billion to $4.4 trillion during that period or by nearly 10X. Likewise, the national debt has nearly quadrupled to $17 trillion during the same period.
Well, all this monetary and fiscal profligacy did apparently help in one precinct: Namely, the Washington beltway where median household income reached its all-time high in 2012 (the last year available) of $65,200 and undoubtedly continues to rise. By contrast, 30 states reached their peak real household incomes more than a decade ago, and some reached that point more than two decades back.
The provinces have thus not kept pace with the imperial capital. Not by a long shot.
"Regrettably, competing companies on both sides of this issue refused to come to agreement on how to achieve that goal."
It was always obvious that in the US lobbies make the laws and politicians are nothing but muppets, but it's still shocking to have that confirmed so clearly.
And now the white flag is being waved, because politicians are so bloody dependent on the money from lobbyists that they can't act at all any more without their approval? WTF!
More like you've allowed the bastards to gerrymander the electoral boundaries to the point that hardly any of them are vulnerable to being voted out. Since they don't have to answer to the voters, they're being entirely rational in only paying attention to those who can screw them up, or alternatively reward them - the lobbyists.
"It's gettin' so a businessman can't expect no return from a fixed fight. Now, if you can't trust a fix, what can you trust?" - Johnny Caspar, Miller's Crossing
Look, it's not up to "businesses on both sides" to agree. That's like asking pigs to agree with tapeworms about what constitutes an equitable division of nourishment. It's up to you to make a rule that resolves the problem in the interests of the public. You know, the poor saps who voted for you.
A case of two nations "divided by a common language?"
"The enjoyment of a common language was of course a supreme advantage in all British and American discussions," Churchill wrote in The Second World War. No interpreters were needed, for one thing, but there were "differences of expression, which in the early days led to an amusing incident." The British wanted to raise an urgent matter, he said, and told the Americans they wished to "table it" (that is, bring it to the table). But to the Americans, tabling something meant putting it aside. "A long and even acrimonious argument ensued," Churchill wrote, "before both parties realised that they were agreed on the merits and wanted the same thing."
Who gives a FLYING FUCK what "companies" want? Aside from Senator LayDown, that is...
We all know what they want - all the money and total control, and they're more than willing to give their whores a (small) pittance to get it.
Congress and Senate - get a different attitude, if you expect the current "system" to continue. Otherwise, find a different trough. Sooner or later, the proles are going to stir, and I'm pretty sure who will be against the Peridon.
It could get ugly - I sincerely hope NOT - but I don't see any real reform coming soon. People are getting restless...
Anyone interested in returning to Congress next January, that's who. These businesses are powerful enough that they can ruin any campaign that goes against them. Campaign restrictions don't bother them, as they have enough shills and shells to conceal their actions and enough palm grease to make anyone else turn the other way.
About the only way something serious will get done is if it hits a crisis level: as in people DIE as a result.
The bigger companies are simply patenting everything that moves, and everything they is not intended to move!
With Corporate evil/greed, do you really expect them to co-operate?
When all is said and done, they are mainly doing a land grab, they ain't inventions as we once knew them.
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This post has been deleted by its author
You realize the USPTO is one of the most understaffed bureaus in the American Executive Branch? If they're rubber-stamping stuff, it's because they lack the resources (both time and money) to do much else. And they STILL get chewed out no matter what they do. Frankly, a position in the USPTO is probably one of the more thankless positions in American government.
Wrote :- "You realize the USPTO is one of the most understaffed bureaus in the American Executive Branch? If they're rubber-stamping stuff, it's because they lack the resources ... to do much else."
Thta's no excuse for doing the job shoddily. They should just have less throughput. No-one is ever going to increase their budget if they appear to be "getting the job done" to the satisfaction of the patent troll companies and their paid politicians.
It when they're under considerable pressure to keep up quotas or they get their budget slashed FURTHER. Put it this way, when you're faced with the prospect of being downsized down to just a yes man (or worse a yes-machine), and you're faced with a mountain of applications, all of which has to be done today, what choice do you have?
Arguing for reform, or for change to patent terms/limits, or for US elected officials to honor the nation and its citizens ... is totally ineffective. It is wishful, delusional thinking at best.
The ability to sway elections and field armies of lobbyists is a function of ca$h ... rivers of it.
Regard: two brothers inherit an oil business and mushroom it into a $150 Billion oil and industrial empire. Consider that each brother has $5 Billion in personal, liquid capital at hand. Let's break that down to something we peasants can relate to: $5,000 in pocket.
One brother donates $23 to a national public broadcasting network. When a film producer arrives with an unflattering documentary film about one of the brothers, the network decides not to air the film, ostensibly to avoid offending a major contributor. The brother still has $4,977 in pocket.
Both brothers are upset at political trends in the nation, and decide to create and fund a counter-balancing movement, donating $150 each. One brother still has $4,827 in pocket; the other, $4,850. The wrong political party is still functioning, so the two brothers pull out all stops and each agrees to up the ante. They pony up $250 each, for a $500 massive nation-wide media and lobbying campaign. This still leaves each brother with more than $4,500 in pocket.
A long-time political consultant to the brothers convinces them that a more effective way of realizing their political objective is to focus on the states, and their legislative bodies. This might even require a commitment of as much as $500 from each brother, bringing their cash in pocket down to $4,000 each ... 80% of their original "walking around" money.
See where this is going? We peasants simply cannot fathom what a Billion dollars really is, but if you break it down to mentally-recognizable numbers, it starts to illustrate the ability of the truly wealthy among us ... the Oligarchs ... to use their wealth as a weapon against us. And given the massive, literally inexhaustible bulk of that wealth, we will lose our democracy long, long before they run out of pocket money.
Thus, we are shocked! Simply SHOCKED when a US politician finds a coward's way of doing his Master's bidding ... and we are simply pissing into the wind as we wish something different could happen other than having it blow back in our face.
A fair and sensible patent law can only come from centuries of Common Law abstracted into its fundamental principles, and sound legal reasoning. It seems unlikely that such law will emerge from corporate influence over the legislative process.
Congress has to hear the arguments and counterarguments, ruminate on them for a while to clarify the competing values at stake, and write law that addresses these values while allowing courts sufficient flexibility to judge the extent to which these values manifest in each specific case.
Instead, they seem to have completely abdicated their responsibilities.
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