Posts Tagged: "popular press"

Before you decide to bash the United States patent system or teach Patents 101 in 300 words or less, please acknowledge your limited knowledge of the subject matter. Please tell your audience that your article is only part of a much larger story that can’t be covered in a single column or blog post. Above all, please do not encourage them to take actions that could have serious legal consequences. You are telling an incomplete story.

I spend a lot of time every day and my staff also spends time every day looking through press releases, looking for stories. And I can’t tell you how many times I have come across something that I knew was good but I couldn’t get any information on. I mean literally no information other than the self-congratulating, back slapping stuff that you see in two or three paragraphs in a press release. So that is one of the things I want to talk to you about today. How do you get your story to those journalists and reporters out there who care? Continually there are calls from detractors who want to change the technology transfer system regardless of how wildly successful it has been.

In a recently published Forbes.com article titled”The Federal Circuit, Not the Supreme Court, Legalized Software Patents,” Lee doubled down with his absurd and provably incorrect assertions regarding the patentability of software patents. But he also more or less sheepishly admitted that his reading of the most relevant case is not one that is widely accepted as correct by anyone other than himself. He wrote: “To be clear, plenty of people disagree with me about how Diehr should be interpreted.” Thus, Lee admits that his primary assertion is one he created from whole cloth and contrary to the widely held views to the contrary. Of course, the fact that his radical views are in the minority was conveniently omitted from his ?Ars Technica? article. If Lee has any integrity he will issue a public apology to the Federal Circuit and issue a retraction. If Lee doesn’t come to his senses and do the right thing in the face of overwhelming evidence that he is wrong then Forbes.com and Ars Technica should step in and do what needs to be done.

Indeed, few articles have struck a nerve in me quite the way that a recent Ars Technica article did. The article is titled How a rogue appeals court wrecked the patent system??. It is a cheap shot, factually inaccurate and embarrassingly incorrect “news” story that concludes the Federal Circuit is at the heart of all the problems in the patent system. A real Pinocchio tale. Ars Technica? should be ashamed at having published such an inaccurate attack piece. If they are not going to properly vet articles in advance of publication then what have they become? Little more than an online technology specific version of those tabloids with the salacious headings. The patent system is far to important to the U.S. economy and our way of life to suffer from that level of journalistic ignorance and bias.

Those who don’t believe innovation leads to job creation have their heads firmly implanted in the sand and simply must choose to ignore history, which proves otherwise. It is flat out irresponsible to suggest that speeding up the process at the USPTO would be anything other than one darn good idea, and practically essential to the resurgence of the US economy. The authors and the Wall Street Journal should be ashamed of themselves. We all should expect more from one of the Nation’s papers of record.

Straight from the “it’s about time” department comes breaking word that the so-called popular press are finally identifying the most under reported news story of this recession. The United States Patent and Trademark Office of foundering and it needs more money in order to do its job. Despite their lip service to innovation and job creation, politicians seem to year after year leave the Patent Office under funded and incapable of satisfying its purpose. But thankfully CBS did a 2 minute and 36 second segment on the crisis this past weekend!

Perhaps you have come across this story in the popular press over the last day.  It seems to be widely reported that Microsoft has convinced the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to grant a stay of the permanent injunction issued against the Redmond, WA based company relative to its popular word processing software – Word.  I…

The Wall Street Journal Online just published an article titled Why Technologists Want Fewer Patents, which will apparently appear in the June 15, 2009, edition of the paper on page A13, under the heading “Opinion.”  The article discusses the US Supreme Court agreeing to hear Bilski v. Doll, which will decide the fate of at least some business method patents,…

There are a lot of crazies coming out of the woodwork with respect to the ACLU’s efforts to have the patent laws of the United States declared unconstitutional.  Perhaps you have heard, the ALCU is standing up for breast cancer patients because Myriad Genetics has patented genes.  How awful really.  Not that Myriad has patented genes, because that is factually…

The ACLU should be sanctioned for its frivolous lawsuit challenging gene patents, which was filed Tuesday in the United States Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York.  This lawsuit is nothing more than grandstanding, it presents frivolous arguments and outright lies.  The ACLU would have you believe that the patents cover naturally occurring genes, which is simply…