Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced Thursday that he has reached a tentative agreement on patent overhaul legislation with the panel's ranking member Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. "We have reached a tentative agreement in principle that preserves the core of the compromise struck in committee last year," Leahy said in a statement. Leahy said he hoped to release details of the agreement "in the coming days" after consulting with other senators and House lawmakers.
Leahy noted that when he began working on the issue several years ago with Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., and others "we wanted to improve patent quality and the operations at the [Patent and Trademark Office], and address runaway damage awards that were harming innovation. We are close to a compromise that will address these issues."
He added, that "No one will think this a perfect bill, but we are close to a comprehensive patent reform bill that benefits all corners of the patent community." The patent bill approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in April 2009 aimed to address the PTO's chronic application backlog and improve internal efficiencies. It also would change the protocol for challenging patents - a move that has divided small innovators, the life-sciences sector and the IT industry.
The Innovation Alliance, which has been critical of the bill, said the changes "appear to be a positive step in the right direction." The group's executive director, Brian Pomper, said in a statement "We have advocated for significant changes to the post-grant review provisions of the legislation that would prevent repeat legal challenges to patents because allowing repeat challenges would dampen U.S. job creation at the worst possible time." Sessions also has raised concerns about the language related to challenging patents after they have been granted that was included in the bill passed by the committee.

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Any changes that weaken patent enforcement, including reduction of damages, will harm innovation, not improve it as some would argue.
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This is one of the few times that I agree with Sen Leahy. The patent reform bill greatly benefits the patent community as it streamlines the existing patent system, as well as limits unnecessary litigation costs. My fellow employees down at the air purifiers company also agree with me that this is very important legislation.
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Tuesday, March 9, 2010
When companies pay cash upfront for issued patents, without a courtroom battle, the price rarely exceeds $10 million and is usually well under $5 million.
When companies decide, instead, to try to cut corners, pirate the technology, build a business around it, and then go through all kinds of deceiptful and contemptuous lawyering to avoid paying anything at all to the patentee, then they end up paying the large centimillion damage awards that can approach or even exceed $1 Billion.
That is, as it should be. The law should be structured to encourage compliance and discourage cheating. No reduction in penalties or costly political lobbying needed.
If companies want to reduce their cost of acquiring new technology, all they need to do is show some respect for the risks taken by inventors and also for the law. This would also reduce their political lobbying expense as well, which has obviously become a big part of their new technology acquisition strategy.
It is their cheating and trying to avoid paying anything at all that leads to the high cost legal battles and high damage awards.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
When companies pay cash upfront for issued patents, the price rarely exceeds $10 million and is usually well under $5 million.
When companies decide, instead, to try to cut corners, pirate the technology, build a business around it, and then go through all kinds of deceiptful and contemptuous lawyering to avoid paying anything at all to the patentee, then they end up paying the large centimillion damage awards that can approach or even exceed $1 Billion.
That is, as it should be. The law should be structured to encourage compliance and discourage cheating.
If companies want to reduce their cost of acquiring new technology, all they need to do is show some respect for the risks taken by inventors and also for the law.
It is their cheating and trying to avoid paying anything at all that leads to the high cost legal battles and high damage awards.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Very few "players" in capitalism take as much financial risk as new technology developers.
To ask for 20% of the profits created by new technology is not only fair, in terms of basing the reward on the value created, but it is also reasonable considering the great risks taken on.
Unfortunately, piracy is all-too-common and only increases the risks that new technology developers take. When a technology is pirated, the new technology development team takes on the additional "collection risk", which can requires many years of very costly litigation.
Those who understand finance know that financial returns are measured not only by dollar amount but also by the time to payback. The "time value of money" is a common phrase in measuring returns.
Piracy not only increases the dollar amount of the risk of new technology development, but it also increases the time to payback, sometimes as much as a decade.
If pirates and would-be pirates of new technologies want to reduce the costs of innovation and new technology, the best way to do it is to simply stop pirating, show some respect for the law and for the risks taken by the technology developers, and pay a fair price to begin with.
To the extent that the costs and risks of new technology development are reduced, both in dollar amount and in time, technology developers are happy with a smaller reward. But, to the extent that pirates force us to incur much greater financial risk and time-to-payback, then we deserve, & rightfully so, to collect higher returns for our work in the form of treble damages.
In my personal opinion, the penalties should also include tough criminal penalties. Like securities and investment advisor regulations, it sometimes becomes necessary to use the threat of criminal punishment as a deterent to misbehavior.
Jonathan Gal
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Any changes that weaken patent enforcement, including reduction of damages, will harm innovation, not improve it as some would argue.
Too many corporate managers feel entitled to simply use whatever technology they want. Piracy happens far too often, and it hurts both innovation and the consumer.
Friday, February 26, 2010
""...agreement in principle that preserves the core of the compromise struck in committee last year"
Sure, one pirate agrees with another how to split up thebooty. Small entities and many others who have a survival stake in this were not permitted to participate. What a farce!
Patent reform is a fraud on America. It is patently un-American.
Please see http://truereform.piausa.org/ for a different/opposing view on patent reform.
Dale B. Halling
Friday, February 26, 2010
The Director of the Patent Office David Kappos is arguing that patent reform will be good for independent inventors.
I disagree that patent reform is good for independent inventors or the US economy.
1) Damages – I believe that the patent reform bill still has the provision that reduces damages for infringing. As long as this provision is in the patent reform bill it will damage small inventors and the US economy.
2) First-to-File: I understand and have made the point that very few cases are won by the second to file. However, a first-to-file system is a first step in eliminating the inventor from the patent process. The next step will be to issue patents to entities, why name the inventors since we are not serious about the true inventors anyway. A first to file system is a fraud. It rewards not inventors but people who are skilled at gaming the system.
This is similar to the publication rule. Most patent applications were being published at 18 months anyway and if you did not want to foreign file you could avoid publication. But, publication is a breach of the social contract between the inventor and society. Society gets the benefit of disclosure but the inventor may never receive his part of the bargain. Note that immediately after this breach pendancy times expanded and the allowance rate fell off a cliff. Ron Katznelson has done a study showing that pendancy times always expand, usually by a factor of two, when a country adopts publication.
3) Publication: I believe that the present bill requires the publication of all patent applications. As stated above this is a clear breach of the social contract between the inventor and society. Publication discourages people from inventing and filing for patents. If an invention can be kept a trade secret, more people will chose this right to the detriment of everyone. We tried the trade secret route in the middle ages and the level of innovation was pitiful. If an invention cannot be kept a trade secret, investors will be less willing to back a company whose inventions are known to the whole world before the company even gets protection in their own country.
Real Patent Reform
Here are my suggestions for real patent reform that would not only help small inventors but the US economy.
1) Repeal Publication: This would restore the social contract
2) Repeal KSR: A subject standard of patentability just increases costs and uncertainty associated with the patent process
3) Repay PTO: Congress should repay the over $1B it stole from inventors with interest.
4) Regional Offices for PTO: This would ensure steady funding of the PTO and increase examiner retention
5) Repeal eBay: This decision is logical absurdity. If a patent give you the right to exclude, then if you win a patent infringement case you must be able to enforce your only right – the right to exclude
6) Eliminate “Combination of Known Elements”: The fact that the Supreme Court does not understand that every invention in the history of the world is a combination of known elements is high of ignorance. Have they ever heard of “conservation of matter and energy”?
Dale B. Halling, Author of the “Decline and Fall of the American Entrepreneur: How Little Known Laws and Regulations are Killing Innovation.” http://www.amazon.com/Decline-Fall-American-Entrepreneur-Regulations/dp/1439261369/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262124667&sr=8-1
Steve R.
Friday, February 26, 2010
This is an incomplete article. Why only a citation from a pro-patent industry special interest group? To balance your article, which would be good jouranlism, I would suggest that you contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The patent system is broken. Patents are being granted for things that should not be patentable, such as business methods, software, genes, etc. The patent system needs to be fixed.