Latest Attempt At Patent Reform Introduced
from the another-year,-another-attempt dept
Representatives Rick Boucher and Howard Berman have decided to take their own stab at patent reform. While we (pretty obviously) have been pushing for patent reform for quite some time, we've been mostly disappointed by the attempts from Congress in the past. From the article discussing the Boucher/Berman bill, it sounds like it's a step in the right direction, though hardly a comprehensive reform plan. It would add two useful features: letting third parties comment during the application process as well as setting up a program for post grant reviews (hopefully one that's a lot more efficient and useful than what's in place now). Of course, none of this gets to the heart of the problems with the system, but if they can slow down the more egregious problems of the system, that's not a bad thing.![Hide This Hide this](https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/topclose.png)
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
It's progress
to the responsible Representatives is in order.
When the dog finally lies down on command
you don't tell him you're disappointed because
he didn't roll over as well.
Give the nice politicians a cookie.. err I mean
encouraging comment.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
so...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
for once I have to agree with PhysicsGuy
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Obviousness Bounty
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
RTFP
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Buy a new Eight Ball
What do you expect? Does anyone really expect much quality on something when you one have a few hours per case? No exaggeration, my case load was ~ 8 hours per one case. Can't do much in that amount of time.
Time for reform in this office is LONG overdue.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
A different perspective.
Public review from people who would like to use the new idea would uniformly be negative. Of course it's obvious, that way I can use the idea without having to license it.
It's just replacing one bad idea with another.
The right approach is to have open licensing. All manufactures paid a fixed percentage to license all the IP in their products. Since they have to make the payment and all manufactures do there is no incentive to sue. The IP holders can bicker amoung themselves to see what share goes to who.
When an important patent expires the goverment get's that share as a tax.
Clean and simple, no muss no fuss. Of course it's unrealistic since it looks forward and not backwards as lawyers often do.
mjr1007
[ link to this | view in chronology ]