Summary: The fight against patent trolls is gaining a lot of momentum, but other patent-related issues get sidelined as a result

Patent changes are afoot, but it does not seem likely that anything other than patent trolls will change. Timothy B. Lee, who has written about patents for years, says that reform is sought even by Conservatives and a government-focused site has a new Commentary titled "It’s Time for Congress to Take on Patent Trolls" (trolls are already the focus of the White House [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]). A political site, Politico, does the same and some say that the Obama administration intervention in an important patent case is a bad sign to "Patent Holding Companies".

Patent trolls are almost definitely going to be negatively affected soon. It is a step in the right direction but also a step short of Utopia.

Apparently, says Troll Tracker, the state of Nebraska is going after trolls in another interesting way, targeting the lawyers:

I was heretofore unaware of Nebraska’s even having cans of whoop-ass, but oh my do they ever. Have y’all seen this by Scott Bialecki?

There is this new study which says "nuisance patent litigation" -- not just patent trolls -- costs customers billions of dollars. It alludes to a high-profile case which involves Android:

For the first time in 25 years, an American president, represented by U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, vetoed an earlier decision by the International Trade Commission that would have prevented some models of older Apple iPads and iPhones from entering the U.S. The models in question may now be imported. The case is at the heart of patent litigation between Apple and Samsung.

Prior to that, this whole case which Apple had started by suing Android backers including Samsung, almost had some Samsung devices banned [1, 2\. This whole dispute shows that the biggest problem is not trolls but the coordinated attacks by cartels like CPTN members against low-cost competition. How long before this bigger problem is tackled? ⬆