Professor Paul M. Janicke, who comes from University of Houston Law Center (i.e. Texas, as the apple doesn't fall far from the tree), has just published this long guest post in a blog of patent maximalists. "I have now been a registered patent attorney for 50 years," he discloses, and "I feel it is time to consider some major surgery on the patent statute..."
"The patent maximalists with their lunacy (greed rather) would have us believe that the system is too tough and strict. Or that it needs to be loosened and made more lenient..."In Janicke's own words: "You usually have to fight [sic] off multiple IPRs in the Patent & Trademark Office, during which time any infringement suits you have filed are likely stayed. If your client’s patents survive [sic] the PTO proceedings, you then have to battle [sic] against the much wider field of prior art established by the America Invents Act. For example, foreign patents used to be effective as prior art as of their grant or publication dates; now they are secret prior art as of their foreign filing dates. Time bars of public use and on sale, formerly limited to U.S. activities, are now expanded to world-wide events. And some kinds of prior art were removable by showing an earlier invention date, but that option is now gone. Meanwhile the remedies section, €§271, has not changed in any meaningful way. No wonder patent infringement suits filings have dropped 30% as of June 30 of this year, compared to two years earlier."
So what? Who suffers from that? Patent law firms, obviously. Like those that paid perhaps million dollars in salaries to Janicke over the years (decades). We've put "sic" in the above in order to highlight Janicke's gross inversion of narratives, wherein the aggressor (plaintiff) is somehow under "attack", merely "fighting" a "battle" to "survive". Guess who started the fight. These people often equate patent judges with "death squads" like they're the "gestapo" or the "SS". It's an abhorrent distortion of reality, but that's just how extreme these people have become. They don't seem to care about justice, about due process, about the facts etc. If prior art exists somewhere to invalidate or refute claims of novelty, how is that a bad thing? We should welcome facts, we should strive for justice. With patents, as with anything else, the burden of proof should be wholly on the accuser.
"We've put "sic" above on order to highlight Janicke's gross inversion of narratives, wherein the aggressor (plaintiff) is somehow under "attack", merely "fighting" a "battle" to "survive".""A Decade Of US Patent Reform Must Be Undone," says Watchtroll's (Paul Morinville and Gene Quinn) latest headline. That's how they started this week or weekend because it's Labor Day in the US. Guess what they profit from... what a bunch of bullies. We don't even wish to bother refuting this nonsense because we've done it many times before. Watchtroll is like a broken telephone, constantly complaining about SCOTUS, the Federal Circuit, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and inter partes reviews (IPRs), not to mention 35 U.S.C. ۤ 101 which voids a lot of software patents at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and outside it.
Steve Brachmann, a hired writer of Quinn (neither of them can be considered a practicing technologist), constantly blasts politicians who side with technology companies. "Tang and Van Slyke Inducted into National Inventors Hall of Fame for Development of OLED Display Technology," says Brachmann in yesterday's headline. Coming from a site that keeps bashing science and attacking technology companies (Watchtroll does this every week; here's a recent example), that's just rather amusing to say the least. ⬆