As Expected: Trial Lawyers Made A Huge Miscalculation In Killing Recent Patent Reform
from the have-fun-guys dept
Back in May, we wrote about how, despite pretty much everyone agreeing on a (decent, if not amazing) patent reform bill in the Senate, the whole thing got shot down at the last minute. That was when the trial lawyers called Senator Harry Reid, asking him to kill the whole thing, which he did by telling Senator Patrick Leahy that he wouldn't allow the bill to go to the floor for a vote. This came after months of detailed negotiations, getting nearly everyone into agreement on the bill, which would have made life at least somewhat more difficult for patent trolls. About a week after that, we pointed out that it seemed likely that the patent trolls had miscalculated badly, because it was widely expected that the Republicans would take control of the Senate in the fall (as they did), and they were more gungho on real patent reform and (obviously) not concerned with what trial lawyers think (mocking trial lawyers being a hobby of Republican politicians).And, indeed, that prediction appears to have been quite accurate. Senator Orrin Hatch -- who is seen as something of a copyright maximalist though apparently doesn't feel that way about patents -- went on the attack against patent trolls in a floor speech.
Hatch's speech touched on a few other issues -- some good, some bad. He's pushing new federalized trade secret laws. This is a really bad idea, which we'll be discussing in more detail later. However, he also supports ECPA reform -- something that we've supported for years and has never gone anywhere in Congress. He brought up some other important issues, including immigration for high skilled workers. So the speech was definitely a mixed bag, but it had a lot of good points (unless you're a patent troll or a trial lawyer).
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Filed Under: orrin hatch, patent reform, patent trolls, patents, trial lawyers
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Huh?
Why should Harry Reid worry about the trial lawyers paying him for making a terrible mistake? Now they will have to dole out much more in order to rein it it again.
As a lobby prostitute, you have to gain more by your customers not getting satisfaction the way they thought they would.
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Re: Huh?
Meanwhile, the actual patent bar is a tiny subset of the bar in general because it requires special extra credentials. So I don't see your average ambulance chaser caring much about patent reform either way.
Patent attorneys are the nerds of law and that is strictly enforced.
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Re: Re: Huh?
Meanwhile, the actual patent bar is a tiny subset of the bar in general because it requires special extra credentials.
Agreed. As a business litigation attorney, I am a "trial lawyer" in the broad sense. The vast majority of trial lawyers, including myself, are not qualified to touch patent law. Further, the few patent attorneys I do know do not represent patent trolls. There are -- really, it's true -- actual inventors creating actual patentable products for market, and ethical patent attorneys out there to represent them.
Of course patent trolls suck, but semantically, "patent bar" is a more accurate description and doesn't drag unrelated good guys into it.
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Re: Re: Re: Huh?
Instead it's just a bad idea due to lack of experience and relevant expertise, instead of formal qualifications.
Now if only there were a copyright bar that required a degree in the arts to sit for….
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Huh?
Nonetheless, lawyers do have an ethical duty to only take cases they are competent to handle. If one were actually competent to litigate a patent case, one would think they could pass the patent bar, and as such, would.
From my frame of reference, non-patent attorneys don't touch patent issues. Because malpractice.
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So... what am I supposed to get out of this?
Drum up cash from these 'threatened' businesses. The ping against the Trolls was an easy win so not worth any kudos in my book. His position on trade secret laws makes the whole thing bust in my opinion.
Will wait until the final bill is once again sitting out for all to see... and hopefully will not be chained by last minute riders, pork, and loopholes!
Yea, just because Obama got his chops busted does not mean the repukes are going to press forward swinging in favor of the American sheepizens that voted them in as a rebuke to Obama and the Dems.
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Re:
Maybe you'll find it easier to read when structured as a patent?
What is claimed is:
1. A method and apparatus for patent reform comprising the steps of:
(a) Use of a patent reform bill.
(b) Having pretty much universal agreement in Senate.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein the bill is decent, if not amazing.
3. The method of claim 1 wherein trial lawyers call Senator Harry Reid, asking him to kill the whole thing.
4. The method of claim 3 wherein the Senator follows through, comprising the steps of:
(a) Killing the bill
(b) Telling Senator Patrick Leahy that he wouldn't allow the bill to go to the floor for a vote.
5. The method of claim 4, with optional gloating.
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Re:
You're right. Just tried to fix it. Ugh. Sorry. Was in a rush to get somewhere and... it shows.
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i'll hazard a guess that like so many other things that get stopped or advanced, depending on the subject, they knew what was going on and what was going to go on, but like to exercise the power they have, proving that the politicians have only what they are allowed and dont actually decide anything!!
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Just Big Money infringers
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/11/11/real-patent-reform-should-strengthen-property-r ights-not-weaken-them/
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Re: Just Big Money infringers
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Re: Re: Just Big Money infringers
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Re: Re: Re: Just Big Money infringers
ergo... we are all trolls. So I don't even worry about the word anymore because it has lost all meaning.
You have 2 choices... responds to the idiots or not... responding might feed a troll, but you still may enlighten another curious/unsure individual reading your response.
A more appropriate term of 'shill' might have followed proper syntax for our "Troll Skreeming" friend here.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Just Big Money infringers
The idea of IP law should not be to prevent this person's perverted definition of 'stealing'. No one is entitled to a government monopoly privilege (or anything the government provides) and if the privilege makes society worse off then those who are privileged are not contributing to society but are effectively stealing from it (taking that which is not owed to them, a monopoly privilege, without contributing back the value of what is being taken). IP should be about promoting the progress and serving the public interest. That this commenter has made it into something else entirely is arguably the biggest reason to abolish IP law altogether.
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Re: Re: Re: Just Big Money infringers
Troll behavior is troll behavior, even if it's wrapped in sweet talk. As proof, see EVERY politician, ever.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Just Big Money infringers
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Re: Just Big Money infringers
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Re: Just Big Money infringers
Tired of Trolls invading your forum? Having to put with their brain-damaged texts?
Well, no more! Acme's Troll-Away(tm)(c)(p)(m-o-u-s-e) will send those mutants scurrying for the dark.
Just use Troll-Away's secret, patented forumula of dihydrogen-oxygen on your monitor and off they go!
*Troll-Away is not responsible for anything..nope, nothing. Any bad reviews will be met Roca-style litigation.
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Re: Re: Just Big Money infringers
People are such tools...
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Re: big companies who continues to steal ideas
2) Ideas are a dime-a-dozen, as any VC will be happy to explain, and de minimis non curat lex. (The law does not concern itself with trifles.)
Implementation and execution are what have value.
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Re: Just Big Money infringers
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Re: Just Big Money infringers
Independent re-invention is common once the creative zeitgeist has been primed for it. It's like filling a beaker with the right chemicals and some lightning. You will end up with the building blocks of life. It's a deterministic process.
Brainstorms from the zeitgeist really shouldn't be patented by they are far more credible than most of the completely trivial nonsense that gets patented these days.
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Re: Just Big Money infringers
I use their search engine
I use Google maps
I use their gmail services
I benefit from all these and their services are better than the next guy.
So what have you done?
If Google wants patent reform then that's reason enough to consider the option.
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Re: Re: Just Big Money infringers
Again, what have you done?
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Re: Just Big Money infringers
"Ideas" are not, and should not, be subject to IP protection, and they have virtually no value.
Execution is what matters most.
It is sincerely unlikely you are in the software business if you do not understand this distinction.
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Re: Just Big Money infringers
Everything is a rehash of a repost of a rejig.
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Never understood Copyright vs Patents
But some high school dropout who strums up a guitar in just the right way to catch the right tune can not only potentially live the rest of his life on that, but feeds his children's children on it too.
Now a song and a new type of circuit board as two very different things, and they should be treated as such.
But how can somebody like Senator Hatch look at you straight in the face and claim we "need" 100+ years of protection for one thing to promote innovation but then turn around and say 20 years for this other type of innovation is just fine?
On its face this is inconsistent worldview.
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Re: Never understood Copyright vs Patents
After 14 years... it should be public domain.
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Re: Never understood Copyright vs Patents
A prostitute who services KKK members and Black Panther members does not have an inconsistent world view - she just takes money from whoever will pay.
Same with Senators. They'll write and support laws from whoever pays them the most.
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Re: Never understood Copyright vs Patents
Patentable inventions are more-or-less inevitable. If person A doesn't invent a thing, eventually Person B will invent the same thing. Maybe 6 months later (if it's a bad patent), maybe 20 years later (if it's a good patent). But eventually.
Copyrightable works (books, music, etc.) are not inevitable. If The Rolling Stones didn't record Satisfaction, nobody ever will. If Neal Stephenson didn't write Cryptonomicon, then nobody ever will. Ever.
The (supposed) benefit to society from patents is to accelerate technological progress, by making inventions public sooner. [Our present implementation seems to instead make things worse, but that's the idea behind it.]
The (supposed) benefit to society from copyrights is to encourage authors and artists to create, by giving them a way to profit from that creation. This also doesn't work very well anymore (we need a new method, yet it did work OK before computers made things easy to copy). But that's the idea.
I don't support the status quo implementation of either patent or copyright law - a reasonably good idea has become perverted - but there is a very good rational reason why copyrights are longer than patents.
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Re: Never understood Copyright vs Patents
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I like your optimism, however...
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Here's a good federal trade secret law: Thou Shalt Not Have Trade Secrets. Anything less than that, I would oppose.
Patents and copyrights are both based on good ideas that did very useful things for our society. We owe the Industrial Revolution, almost in its entirety, to patents. Since then, those who profit from patents and copyrights have taken the concepts and corrupted them, but they could still be reformed, restored to their original purity, and be something good.
Trade Secrets, on the other hand, have no redeeming virtues and need to be done away with.
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Trail Lawyers are the Market solution
For instance, say a doctor rapes some of his patients while working at a clinic. The clinic had several reports of this and did nothing. Currently that would be settled by suing the clinic. If that option is removed, there would have to be more regulation to stop the clinic from acting in this manner. Regulators would be needed to shutdown the clinic if it continued to allow this behavior.
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Re: Trail Lawyers are the Market solution
There have been doctors lynched in rural counties where tort reform made lititation less than useful.
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Re: Trail Lawyers are the Market solution
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Re: Re: Trail Lawyers are the Market solution
Market forces won't get you out of it and they are doing nothing to change this fact because people believe there is such a thing as intellectual property. No, patents, copyright, and trademarks are monopolies. Patents and copyrights are supposed to last for a limited time. And since monopolies are a protectionist measure that distorts the market, the market isn't free.
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Hatch's Speech
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Re: Hatch's Speech
If they did fork over some generous 'campaign donations' in response I imagine he's start talking about 'compromise' and 'not upsetting the system more than absolutely needed', and if they don't, hey, easy PR.
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I understood it correctly
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