Posts Tagged: "john whealan"

Former Cisco CTO, Charles Henery Giancarlo, explained that it was understood that individuals would not be able to manufacture and would need to license their rights to others. “It was specifically contemplated that this would engender a licensing industry with respect to patents.” Indeed, Phelps would later point out that 70% of early U.S. inventors did not even graduate high school. Thus, the founding fathers purposefully set up a system that had unique attributes: “it was cheap so everyone could use it,” Phelps explained. And the founding fathers also knew that the patent system they were creating would lead to individuals obtaining patents on their inventions and those individuals would not be able to manufacture, but would instead license those rights to others. But today “patents are suddenly pro-competitive only if you are a manufacturer,” Self explained.

“The results from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board reflect the procedures it applies, and in my judgment the procedures are wildly off base,” Judge Michel explained… “We’ve had PTAB final results… whatever the intentions were we don’t have to speculate… we have ample evidence of how it worked in practice. We know it doesn’t work satisfactorily.” *** “I don’t think things are really getting much better,” Kappos said. “We are in what I refer to as the leaky life raft.” When you are stranded and a leaky life raft comes along it looks great, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is still a leaky life raft. “The best you can say about 101 is that it has stabilized in a terrible space.”

The inaugural IAM event Patent Law & Policy, which will focus on how developments in law and policy affect patent owners’ ability to monetize their rights, will take place in Washington DC on November 17, 2015. This one-day conference in Washington DC offers all those involved in the patent market the perfect opportunity to listen to, learn about and engage in the many legal and policy debates currently taking place around patents.

Sadly, what seemed so evident to Abraham Lincoln is now all but lost on many elected officials. For over 200 years the U.S. patent system stoked the fire of creative genius by enticing creative persons to innovate by giving them incentive to do so in the form of a patent. Increasingly over the last 10 years the U.S. patent system has chipped away at that incentive. How far rights can be eroded without completely compromising the entire system is a question we shouldn’t have to ponder, but these are not ordinary times.

The problem facing the country as embodied in Congressional proposals to change the patent system is that it’s stuck in a time warp. Congress acts as if the landscape today was exactly the way it looked in 2010 or 2011, but in fact it has totally turned upside down in the last two years. We used to have, for the most part in this country, what I’ll call an honor system where companies that were using technologies patented by others willingly took licenses without being forced by court orders to do so. The honor system now is largely gone.

On Monday, May 11, 2015, IPWatchdog will a co-sponsor a roundtable discussion on patent reform. This event will take place at the law offices of McDermott Will & Emery, which is located directly across the street from the U.S. Capitol. Bernie Knight, a partner with McDermott and a former General Counsel to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, will co-moderate the event along with me. We hope you can join us for this discussion.