Reform Could Kill EFF "Patent Busting Project" 110
netbuzz alerts us to a letter the EFF sent today to Senators Leahy and Specter pointing out a deleterious clause in the current draft of the Patent Reform Act of 2007 — which EFF generally supports. As written, the proposal would kill the EFF's Patent Busting Project. Fine print in the bill would limit the time in which a patent could be challenged, by anyone other than those suffering direct financial harm, to one year after the patent's grant. Since the EFF is non-profit it would have a hard time showing financial harm.
What about consumers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Second Patent Office (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm kidding... but only partly. The more I think about this, the more I like it.
steveha
Solution! I got it! (Score:5, Interesting)
An oversight unit (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Who writes this stuff? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Who writes this stuff? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Second Patent Office (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Who writes this stuff? (Score:5, Interesting)
What you want is bills that are accepted or rejected wholesale, as-is, unmodified.
The last thing you want is to make it easier for someone to add unrelated ammendments, or insert language that totally changes the meaning of the bill. Line-by-line, letter-by-letter editing would make doing this much easier, than the already easy "I submit an ammendment to prepend section 12, subsection (viii), item Q with the word 'not'".
Bills should be submitted in a take-it-or-leave it fashion. If you think you've got an improvement, submit a whole bill with that improvement and convince the original submitter to withdraw their bill.
Enough mucking around with pet causes and unassociated pork-barrelling (now, associated pork-barrelling -- that's good and all).
Anyhow, what do I know. I'm Canadian. You just go keep running your country the way you want to.
E.
Non-Profit can be harmed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Gaming the system? (Score:1, Interesting)
New Patent troll scheme... (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Get stupidly obvious patent
2. Wait 1 year and a day
3. Sue everybody in sight
4. ??????
5. Profit...
Re:Who writes this stuff? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the fear of giving the President a real LBL veto that scares the heck out of a lot of people - and with good reason.
If the President does veto a bill because of a rider, perhaps it would be nice for the media to actually acknowledge WHY he chose not to boost funding for our troops or fund CHIP and place the blame back on the real culprits - those that attached riders to a bill simply because they figured the bill was likely to pass and ride on its coat tails. Similarly, if CHIP or a troop funding bill comes with no riders, make it law to have the President explain why he vetoed it.
Re:Gaming the system? (Score:3, Interesting)
An alternative way to game back is to contest every patent granted as soon as the grant comes out by claiming the "Obviousness" and "Prior art" statements. Just make a short use of Google and most patents will fall short. At least that may make the patent office saturated enough to keep their heads down.
One alternative is to use the Amazon Mechanical Turk [mturk.com] to get help to hunt for stupid patents. Just raise some money first.