Posted on 08/01/2007 7:44:14 PM PDT by Man50D
In extraordinary Senate-House coordination, the two Judiciary committees in the same week voted out a bill (S.1145 and H.R.1908) which, if it becomes law, will spell the end of America's world leadership in innovation. Called the Patent Reform Act, it is a direct attack on the unique, successful American patent system created by the U.S. Constitution.
Prior to 1999, the U.S. Patent Office was required to keep secret the contents of a patent application until a patent was granted, and to return the application in secret to the inventor if a patent was not granted. That protected the legal rights of the inventor, who could then go back to the drawing board to perfect his invention and try again.
A mischievous congressional "reform" in 1999 authorized the U.S. Patent Office to shift to the Japanese and European practice of publishing patent applications 18 months after filing whether or not a decision is yet made on granting a patent. Congress allowed a patent application, under certain conditions, to be exempt from the publication requirement, but the default procedure is to publish.
The 2007 Patent bill would delete this exemption and require publication of all patent applications 18 months after filing even though a decision has not yet been made on granting a patent.
By 2006, the U.S. Patent Office had placed 1,271,000 patent applications on the internet, giving access to anyone anywhere in the world. This foolish practice created a gold mine for China to steal U.S. innovations and get to market quickly.
Chinese pirates don't roam the high seas looking for booty but sit at their computers, roam the internet, and steal the details of U.S. inventions that the U.S. Patent Office loads online. This practice became China's R&D program, and it is even more efficient than China's network of industrial and military spies.
U.S. policy has always been to grant a patent to the first one who actually invents something. But the new Patent bill would change to the foreign system which grants patents to the first one to file papers.
First-to-file would be a windfall to the megacorporations and a big disadvantage to the small-entity inventor. First-to-file would invite an avalanche of applications from the big companies that have the resources to grind out multiple filings, and the small inventor would be lost in the shuffle.
The new Patent bill offers yet another way for patent pirates to steal our technology. It's called post-grant review: a plan to make it easier to challenge patents during the entire life of the patent.
Another provision of the new Patent bill would shift decision-making about damages for patent infringement from market valuations to judgments by judges and juries. This would increase litigation and limit the ability of independent inventors and small companies to enforce their rights or to win just compensation from those who infringe their rights.
The new Patent bill would also transfer unprecedented rule-making authority to the Patent office. That's an abdication of congressional responsibility.
Add it all up, and it is clear that the new Patent bill is a big attack on the constitutional property rights of individual inventors and small enterprises, the very kind of entrepreneurs who give us our most important innovations. About a third of all patent applications are filed by individual inventors, small companies, universities, and non-profit groups.
The common thread in the changes to be made by the new Patent bill is that they favor big companies like Microsoft and hurt individual and small-entity inventors.
Microsoft has thousands of patents, and recently argued that the free GNU/Linux operating system infringes over 200 of them. Microsoft wants to be able to use its huge patent portfolio to intimidate potential competitors, and at the same time it wants it to be easier to knock out individual patents.
If Congress wants to do something constructive for our patent system, Congress should reinstate the rule that the Patent Office may not publish a patent application until a patent is granted, and if it is denied the application must be returned to the inventor with his secrets intact.
Congress should also give back to the Patent Office the flow of fees paid by inventors, which Congress took away in 1999 to spend on other projects. Then the Patent Office can hire more examiners and reduce its backlog of 800,000 applications.
The U.S. patent system is the vital factor in the technological lead that gives us the edge over competitors and enemies. We must not let the globalists destroy it.
Congress Critter ping!
Removing the financial incentive for innovation and risk-taking?
Atlas Shrugged.
Calling John Galt.
If Phyllis Schlafly says it’s true, you can bank on it!
The Fifth Column continues its destruction and give-away of America. So many of the people do not have a clue what they are doing to them. And that is the way the anti-American socialists like it....
If they’re going to give away all our patents I think the legislation should also include all intellectual property rights as well: movies, CDs, book copyrights, music, TV shows, whatever. I’ll bet a bunch of Hollywood liberals, including Babs Streisand, would be howling like banshees. But it’s only fair.
But that's one of the important steps in bringing this country to its knees. We lost the first battle back in the '90's on this, and now they're back for another bigger bite that will hurt even more.
...well said. We don’t need the duplicity. IMO, patents on material items should be better protected. “Intellectual” (entertainment) property restrictions are not as much needed, and larger companies violate them as they choose, regardless (e.g., large corporations and dual licenses with the GPL).
I understood that it is planned as a trilogy - already on the drawing board? (cut & paste)
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth-13-1741-Summer_Seminar_Atlas_Shrugged_film.aspx
Originally, Angelina J. was mentioned as the female lead - but that may have - I hope - gone by the board. No name has been mentioned for "John Galt" - If it finally makes it to the screen - TV - it probably won't be before 2008. I can imagine there's some behind the scene attempts to blackball it all together. Rand knew all the signs of communism from first hand experience growing up in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution - She spells out those signs in her novels. The Socialist powers in DC, etc., would not like to see this story make the light of day. It's a great romance/adventure story that, almost on a subliminal level, educates the viewer about the evils of socialism - it will wake up a lot of sheeple...
It has been delayed for years - and may yet not come out until 2008 - 50 years after it was published...due to the decades of those fighting to prevent it.
Wouldn't it be poetic justice for it to come out in time to wake up enough people to see the light and vote out the socialists - after all, it was Rand who educated Ronald Reagan on the machinations and evils of Communism when he was President of the Screen Guild and she was a script writer in Hollywood...
What's that about wheels that grind "exceeding slow - but exceeding fine"?
Surely, you realize that Democrats don't hold a monopoly on globalism.
In short it will be a disaster.
The idiots in congress are going to make it so that even though I came up with a unique idea and implemented it in a product that I sell somebody else can come along and patent what I’m selling after the fact and take claim to it. I can’t afford to patent every aspect of what I create as I create new things all the time. I’m supposed to be in business to make money, not to keep lawyers employed...
In order to understand the problem above its helpful to know that the number of patents being issued worldwide is going up at about a 30 degree angle annually. But much of the work especially from Japan Korea and China is deriviative. Many small patents that link back to american patents. They link the small patents together to make “synthetic patents” that push out the original work of US patents—so there is no compensation for american inventors.
To get around this problem many american inventors have have filed their patent applications and then left them in limbo in patent pending while their products went to market.
In this way they could get their products to market and enjoy patent protection because having filed the patent they would have prior consent to any subsequent filings to the same thing.
At the same time their patent details would not be available to overseas competitors—who these days have the luxury of perusing American patents from the comfort of home over the internet.
The reform linked to above would strip american inventors of this advantage.
so why invent?
We must not let the globalists destroy it.
But we, in the aggregate, will. Our houses of leadership are filled with swine and will stay so until we reform the qualifications of the electorate to exclude the parasites on the system...
This was part of Clinton's payoff to the Chinese for cash under the table for the 1996 election.
We can't trust George Bush #2 with such a thing.
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