Senate Wants To Exempt Banks From Patent Infringement Lawsuit

from the why-an-exception? dept

Fri, Feb 15th 2008 6:48am — Mike Masnick

The Senate seems to be really into granting immunity these days. Most folks know about the decision to grant telcos immunity for possible violations of the law, but in a much less well publicized situation, the Senate has moved to grant banks immunity from an ongoing patent lawsuit (found via Against Monopoly). While I agree that the patent seems questionable, and the impact on banks would be burdensome, it's ridiculous that the Senate would carve out a special exemption for banks (and apparently, as it stands now, taxpayers would have to pay the patent holder instead -- though, the Senate is trying to change that). It's nice that Congress has noticed that the patent system is broken here, but rather than fixing the actual patent system, their response is just to exempt one class of companies from one particular lawsuit? As reader Rich (who also submitted this item) pointed out: "If this goes through, every big industry will just pay off/lobby their friendly neighborhood Congressman to exempt them from specific patents. Too bad Vonage didn't do this before being forced to pay millions for weak patents."

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

Filed Under: bank, exemption, patents, senate

10 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

angry dude, 15 Feb 2008 @ 7:22am

Hillarious!

Time to put all congressional legislative initiatives up for sale, to be sold to the highest bidder

Honestly, some of those folks should be wearing stripes already...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 15 Feb 2008 @ 7:45am

Why not, they already gave our entire money system to them UNCONSTITUTIONALLY in 1913.

http://www.fdrs.org/fight_corruption.html
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Steve R. (profile), 15 Feb 2008 @ 8:48am

Special Inerests Win Again
The proposal is another non-solution that simply protects a special interest group and neglects the public as a whole. The "real" solution is to change the patent law so that this type of extortion would not be possible. Once again politicians are avoiding making the "hard decisions" and simply applying a band-aide for the benefit of their special interests.

Patents should never be granted for "concepts", "ideas", or "business models". Furthermore, even if a patent is granted, and someone else independently (via a black box development process) develops a similar product, the first patent holder should NOT be able to claim that they are entitled to "fees".
[ link to this | view in thread ]
doesnt matter, 15 Feb 2008 @ 8:57am

Re:
Its nice to see someone educated and right on the "money" in my own little world..i am the only one who sees that kind of stuff..everyone else thinks i am crazy..and perhaps i am..but then again, are we not all a little bit?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ehrichweiss, 15 Feb 2008 @ 8:58am

Re:
This is the most understandable and coherent thing you've written to date. What have you done with the real Angry Dude?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
SomeGuy, 15 Feb 2008 @ 10:14am

Re: Re:
Wow, you're right; I didn't even recognize him.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
angry dude, 15 Feb 2008 @ 10:27am

Re: Re: Re:
it's Friday, folks, before the 3-day weekend

I'm not even angry right now, just mildly irritated...

Have a good day fellas
[ link to this | view in thread ]
SomeGuy, 15 Feb 2008 @ 12:10pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
You too, Mildly-Irritated Dude.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Ajax 4Hire, 15 Feb 2008 @ 12:18pm

Time to call myself a bank.
If you give special treatment to a group then there is a rush to be catagorized as a member of that group.

Just look at the proliferation of people who are handicap. That population is growing because they get preferential treatment.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ryad, 15 Feb 2008 @ 3:12pm

break the law?
I don't understand why you insist on saying that the telephone companies broke any law by performing wiretaps without warrants. (which from what I have read only applies to wiretaps where it travels through the US and the person making and recieving the call are outside of the US)

I hate most phone companies just like the rest of us but claiming that they broke a law, by following a law seems ridiculous.

The FISA bill specifically makes it legal for them to do so. Whether or not you think it was right or not, it was the LAW that told them they could. How could you claim that they did anything illegal when they followed the law.
[ link to this | view in thread ]