Posts Tagged: "The Innovation Act"

For a many years, the pied pipers of the anti-patent lobby whistled the patent troll melody and Congress, desperately in need of a glorious bipartisan victory, pushed and ultimately passed inventor killing legislation… For whatever reason, 2016 represented the year that Congress itself, or at least enough Members of Congress, got serious about considering the negative effects of pandering to the anti-patent lobby. Those effects are now clear and the stage is set to turn it back. Of course, we can anticipate there will be new pushes for patent reform in 2017 and beyond. Perhaps some of those attempts at patent reform will be from the pro-patent side, but we need to remain vigilant because the anti-patent lobby has not and will not go away.

In my 54 years, I’ve never protested anything. I’ve complained to my friends and family and sometimes to a few unfortunate strangers. So this has been the first time publicly protesting anything for me… Darrell Issa was a cosponsor and a major political driver of this startup killing legislation, which is why inventors are going to his events to educate him and his potential voters. Issa’s race is very close with some polls showing him down by several points. His competitor believes in strong patents. This draws a clear distinction between the candidates and inventors and startups in California’s 49th district want to be represented by someone who will preserve their rights, and their companies.

It is pure nonsense to say that opponents of patent reform never offer specifics, cite or discuss textual language of the bills. Utter fiction and complete fantasy. Frankly, Lee’s claims are as comical and insulting as they seem to be uninformed. Only the most disingenuous partisan could suggest that opponents of patent reform do not offer specific explanations citing to textual language of the bills. Indeed, quite the opposite is true. Opponents of patent reform make far more detailed and nuanced arguments. These intellectual, detailed, nuanced arguments have lead those fighting patent reform to lose the linguistic battle time and time again. So not only is what Lee saying false, but it is 180 degrees opposite from reality. So spurious are Lee’s claims that at first glance the article comes across as a piece of patent satire published by The Onion.

Yesterday I moderated a Google Hangout on the topic of patent reform, which was sponsored by the Innovation Alliance’s save the inventor campaign. Joining me for the conversation was United States Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the driving force behind the STRONG Patents Act, and Congressman Thomas Massie, an inventor and patent owner who is a member of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. Our wide ranging conversation addressed whether patents promote or inhibit innovation, the most problematic provisions in the pending patent reform bills, whether patent reform is even necessary, and the inevitable reality that a push for patent reform will remain on the agenda for the foreseeable future.

On Wednesday, October 7, 2015, I will have the honor of interviewing Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) and Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) in a live, bipartisan online Google Hangout. Our conversation will discuss pending patent legislation, specifically addressing concerns with the PATENT Act (S. 1137) and the Innovation Act (H.R. 9), which are currently pending in Congress.

Will House Freedom Caucus members be conservative on patent reform, or will conservatives continue to support the Obama/Google patent reform agenda? Ironically, while Speaker Boehner has been criticized by conservatives as being a Republican in name only (RINO), several of the members of the House Freedom caucus who serve on the House Judiciary Committee have been anything but conservative on certain votes. For example, when it comes to patent reform at least some self professed Congressional conservatives have decided to side with the Obama Administration, giving Obama corporate supporters everything they want from patent legislation.

you continually hear from Members of Congress, Staffers and those giant companies pushing for weaker patents that the goal of the bill is nothing more than to keep small business owners from getting sued for using pieces of equipment that they purchased. The truth, however, is far different. The small businesses that Congress claims they want to protect are just political pawns in a much larger game of chess. The people funding the effort to enact further patent reform are not small businesses; rather they are Google, Cisco, J.C. Penney, and other giant corporations. The interests important to these giant corporations are driving the push for more reform, not a deep-rooted concern for the plight of American small businesses.

Although the latest version of the PATENT Act (S.1137) represents an improvement over previous versions of the legislation, it would still make all U.S. patents less enforceable and cast an ominous cloud over startups and small inventors… The latest version of the PATENT Act notably fails to address the critical overbreadth problems of the customer stay, heightened pleadings, and discovery provisions. Together these provisions place an undue burden on the enforcement rights of legitimate patent owners.