Leahy Brings Back Patent Reform Act That Doesn't Actually Fix Any Of The Patent System's Problems

from the here-we-go-again dept

Thu, Jan 20th 2011 10:00pm — Mike Masnick

As was expected, Patrick Leahy has announced plans to reintroduce patent reform legislation next week. You can read the full text of the bill (pdf), but it looks pretty similar to what was attempted last year. More or less every year for a while now, Congress has tried to pass patent reform legislation. It comes out in January, with claims from those supporting it that this will be the year where it finally gets approved, and every year it dies. It's also worth noting that every year it's watered down more and more in that attempt to get it approved. It was a bad bill to begin with years back, and gets worse each year. It will do almost nothing to mitigate the actual problems of the patent system, and could do a few things to make them worse. It seems like a waste of time to even go through the motions on this again, knowing that it's likely to end up with the same fate as each failed attempt before.

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Filed Under: patent reform, patents, patrick leahy

11 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2011 @ 10:49pm

Perhaps this is the year Techdirt hires a lobbying firm to get its own version of Patent Reform passed?
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Andy (profile), 20 Jan 2011 @ 10:51pm

The definition of insanity
As the popular saying goes: The definition of insanity is repeating the same actions and expecting different results.
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Jay (profile), 20 Jan 2011 @ 11:05pm

Serious question
How is Patrick Leahy not a joke?
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The eejit (profile), 21 Jan 2011 @ 12:51am

Re: Serious question
Because he's a Sena-

Oh, wait.
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NullOp, 21 Jan 2011 @ 5:32am

But it looks good...
The old placebo-law trick is used once again...
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Jan 2011 @ 5:51am

It should be renamed to the Duke Nukem bill
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Jan 2011 @ 6:25am

As long as a senator has someone to second a bill, he can keep adding it onto the order paper each year, where it dies at the end of the session. There is nothing really magical here, just a Senator trying to look like he is doing something when in fact he is doing nothing. It pads a legislative resume, and plays well in the next campaign "Leahy championed real change to our copyright system", all the while knowing it will never even make it to committee.
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Berenerd (profile), 21 Jan 2011 @ 6:51am

Re: Serious question
Sadly, Leahy at one time was a good Senator. Seems now someone has found his price.
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Ronald J Riley (profile), 21 Jan 2011 @ 7:29am

Racket
Leahy is just milking Patent Deform for contributions. It sure looks like an extortion racket to me. It is time that all the players come together and fund an opponent of Leahy.

Some needs to pass a law to stop this.

Ronald J. Riley,

President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org

Other Affiliations:
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 9 pm EST.
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NY Inventor, 21 Jan 2011 @ 9:43pm

Leahy is in Microsoft's pocket
Microsoft is tired of getting sued for all of the technology that they steal. If you look at Leahy's biggest contributors its a Microsoft Who's Who.

Microsoft has not innovated in 15 years. Of course they do not want a strong patent system. The irony of it all is they try to sell this garbage as a way to strengthen innovation. It's goal is to crush innovation.
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nasch (profile), 23 Jan 2011 @ 2:07am

Bad trend
If each successive bill is worse than the last, and has a better chance of passing.... look out.
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