Tech Daily Dose: Senate Patent Reform Redux http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2009/01/senate-patent-reform-redux.php?rss=1 en Copyright 2010 Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:58:16 GMT http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification Senate Patent Reform Redux From Friday's CongressDaily PM Edition:

A Senate bill that would make sweeping changes in the U.S. patent system is moving closer to reintroduction, according to sources close to the talks. Staffers for Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, have resumed negotiations on legislation that passed the committee 13-5 in 2007 but died after Leahy could not win Judiciary ranking member Arlen Specter's support to bring the bill to the floor last spring. The two split over language that would address how damages are awarded in infringement lawsuits -- an issue that bitterly divided industry stakeholders as the bill moved through committee.

Leahy and Specter have indicated that patent legislation is the top priority on their intellectual property agendas, and sources said a bill is expected early in the first session of this Congress, with possible hearings scheduled for March or April. "We'll see this on a fast track," one individual close to the issue said. "The deal is there and it's ready to be made." Read the full story in CongressDaily here (subscription required).

]]> http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2009/01/senate-patent-reform-redux.php?rss=1 http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2009/01/senate-patent-reform-redux.php?rss=1 Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:58:16 GMT cindy responded on August 23, 09 09:14 PM <div class="ad" style="float:right;margin: 0px, 0, 10, 10;"> <h6>Advertisement</h6> <a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/nationaljournalgroup/njonline;feature=techdailydose;series=techdailydose;medium=rss;sz=300x250,336x280;ord=144134912?" target="_blank"><img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/nationaljournalgroup/njonline;feature=techdailydose;series=techdailydose;medium=rss;sz=300x250,336x280;ord=144134912?" border="0" alt=""></a> </div> For convergent or combination products, however, current patent law can be problematic.  The RIM/NTP controversy that nearly shut down Blackberry service last year and was only settled after billion dollar brinksmanship is a perfect case in point online marketing.   To summarize: NTP, Inc. -  a private patent-holding company – held certain (but not all) of the patents in Research in Motion’s (RIM) Blackberry device. Under current patent law, NTP was on the verge, through court injunction, of shutting down the entire product and service even though their particular patents covered only a portion of the total innovation resident in the Blackberry.  As with many technology products, the Blackberry is a conglomerate of dozens of separate patents and, indeed, the technology sector is largely in support of the patent reform bill because of the greater support it offers to convergent / combination technologies.  Under current patent law, moreover, NTP could have sued for damages based on the value of the Blackberry’s entire market.  With this battle as a flashpoint, the new patent legislation calls for “for limiting infringement damages to the economic value of the patent's contribution to an overall product [instead of] damages [being] based on the entire market value of the product”

The thrust of last April’s Wall Street Journal letter, then, was to point out that the RIM/NTP controversy impacts not just tech products but also potentially life-saving devices which – with the rise of convergent medical technologies – likewise increasingly incorporate multiple inventions and multiple patents in their design.  Hence the concluding line to that letter: “Lives, and not just [happy] fingers tapping on BlackBerrys, are at stake.”

 

...]]> http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2009/01/senate-patent-reform-redux.php?rss=1#1348162 http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2009/01/senate-patent-reform-redux.php?rss=1#1348162 Mon, 24 Aug 2009 01:14:54 GMT james responded on August 23, 09 09:10 PM <div class="ad" style="float:right;margin: 0px, 0, 10, 10;"> <h6>Advertisement</h6> <a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/nationaljournalgroup/njonline;feature=techdailydose;series=techdailydose;medium=rss;sz=300x250,336x280;ord=144134912?" target="_blank"><img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/nationaljournalgroup/njonline;feature=techdailydose;series=techdailydose;medium=rss;sz=300x250,336x280;ord=144134912?" border="0" alt=""></a> </div> The current patent system was largely developed during a time when a single patent often correlated with a single invention and thus, online marketing upon commercialization, to a single product.  This one patent – one product paradigm is particularly prevalent in the pharmaceutical industry in which generally just one patent applies to a given drug.

One of the major goals of the new patent reform bill has been to “improve patent quality, deter abusive practices by patent holders, provide meaningful, low-cost alternatives to litigation for challenging the patent validity” as stated by Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), one of the sponsors of the reform bill.   The pharmaceutical industry and voip, with its largely single patent/single product business model, has been well known to be opposed to several of these reform provisions.  According to the International Herald Tribune, they contend that the new bill “would weaken the protection afforded by those patents, making it riskier to spend hundreds of millions to develop the drugs.”

 

...]]> http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2009/01/senate-patent-reform-redux.php?rss=1#1348161 http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2009/01/senate-patent-reform-redux.php?rss=1#1348161 Mon, 24 Aug 2009 01:10:00 GMT