Bonum Certa Men Certa

PATENT Act Comes to US Senate, But It's Corporations-Leaning, Just Like Senate

City horizon



Summary: Politicians are willing to approve changes to law which further empower large corporations that are funding politicians like themselves

IT IS hard to feel excited about the PATENT Act, which we wrote about before [1, 2, 3]. It's just that it doesn't matter much for the large majority of the population. It is a bogus 'reform' for corporations' sake, as one can rather easily see.



"Not only patent trolls are the problem."Over the past 24 hours a lot of people wrote about the PATENT Act because an important step was looming. Articles like "PATENT Act puts trolls in their place" or "PATENT Act is a bridge over patent trolls" sought to push the piece of legislation forward. There are other points of view, which may also be legitimate, such as "Patent legislation will destroy inventive small businesses" (not that small businesses should ever rely on patents in their strategy). "Congress Should Address Patent Trolls," wrote one person, noting:

Actually, aside from the filing the lawsuit part, none of that is true. It would be if Congress passed the PATENT Act, legislation from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., that seeks to limit patent trolling and bring some order and predictability to the patent enforcement process.


But the problem is far broader than that. Not only patent trolls are the problem. They are more of a symptom of the real problem.

"As long as Senate or Congress are so heavily dependent on corporations for funding of their members not much will change, except in favour of the rich and powerful."We now know that the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the PATENT Act [1, 2, 3], but don't waste time celebrating or following the PATENT Act too closely. It is not a reform for people, only for large companies, much like previous so-called 'reforms'.

There is a new article titled "No, the America Invents Act did not cost ‘the economy’ $1 trillion" and it says that "some are still litigating the merits of the last significant patent reform Congress passed, 2011’s American Invents Act. Of particular interest, in some quarters of the intellectual property world, are its provisions expanding the inter partes review procedure, which has allowed many more entities to challenge the validity of patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office."

As long as Senate or Congress are so heavily dependent on corporations for funding of their members not much will change, except in favour of the rich and powerful. We have not yet seen any real reform in the making. No politician is even proposing such a reform.

Recent Techrights' Posts

SoylentNews Grows Up, Registers as a Business, Site Traffic Reportedly Grows
More people realise that social control media may in fact be a passing fad
 
Garden Season Starts Today
Outdoor time, officially...
More Information About Public Talks That Richard Stallman Gave This Week in Europe
Two talks in Switzerland
Engadget is Still a Spamfarm, It's Just an Amazon Catalogue (SPAM/SEO), a Sea of Junk Disguised as "Articles" With Few 'Fillers' (Real Articles) in Between
Engadget writes for bots now, not for humans
Richard Stallman's Talks in Switzerland This Week
We need to put an end to 'cancer culture'; it's trying to kill people and it is even swatting people
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 28, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, March 28, 2024
[Meme] EPO's New Ways of Working (NWoW), a.k.a. You Don't Even Get a Desk at Work and Cannot be Near Known Colleagues
Seems more like union-busting (divide and rule)
Hiding Microsoft's Culpability in Security Breaches and Other Major Blunders (in the United Kingdom, This May Mean You Can't Get Food)
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is vast
Giving back to the community
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 28/03/2024: Sega, Nintendo, and Bell Layoffs
Links for the day
Open letter to the ACM regarding Codes of Conduct impersonating the Code of Ethics
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
With 9 Mentions of Azure In Its Latest Blog Post, Canonical is Again Promoting Microsoft and Intel Vendor Lock-in, Surveillance, Back Doors, Considerable Power Waste, and Defects That Cannot be Fixed
Microsoft did not even have to buy Canonical (for Canonical to act like it happened)
Links 28/03/2024: GAFAM Replacing Full-Time Workers With Interns Now
Links for the day
Consent & Debian's illegitimate constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The Time Our Server Host Died in a Car Accident
If Debian has internal problems, then they need to be illuminated and then tackled, at the very least in order to ensure we do not end up with "Deadian"
China's New 'IT' Rules Are a Massive Headache for Microsoft
On the issue of China we're neutral except when it comes to human rights issues
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 27, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 27, 2024
WeMakeFedora.org: harassment decision, victory for volunteers and Fedora Foundations
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 27/03/2024: Terrorism Grows in Africa, Unemployment in Finland Rose Sharply in a Year, Chinese Aggression Escalates
Links for the day
Links 27/03/2024: Ericsson and Tencent Layoffs
Links for the day
Amid Online Reports of XBox Sales Collapsing, Mass Layoffs in More Teams, and Windows Making Things Worse (Admission of Losses, Rumours About XBox Canceled as a Hardware Unit)...
Windows has loads of issues, also as a gaming platform
Links 27/03/2024: BBC Resorts to CG Cruft, Akamai Blocking Blunders in Piracy Shield
Links for the day
Android Approaches 90% of the Operating Systems Market in Chad (Windows Down From 99.5% 15 Years Ago to Just 2.5% Right Now)
Windows is down to about 2% on the Web-connected client side as measured by statCounter
Sainsbury's: Let Them Eat Yoghurts (and Microsoft Downtimes When They Need Proper Food)
a social control media 'scandal' this week
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 26, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Windows/Client at Microsoft Falling Sharply (Well Over 10% Decline Every Quarter), So For His Next Trick the Ponzi in Chief Merges Units, Spices Everything Up With "AI"
Hiding the steep decline of Windows/Client at Microsoft?
Free technology in housing and construction
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
We Need Open Standards With Free Software Implementations, Not "Interoperability" Alone
Sadly we're confronting misguided managers and a bunch of clowns trying to herd us all - sometimes without consent - into "clown computing"
Microsoft's Collapse in the Web Server Space Continued This Month
Microsoft is the "2%", just like Windows in some countries