One Watchtroll author showed his professionalism just moments ago (promoting that baseless conspiracy theory about Google and Kushner):

Summary: Shooting the messengers (even wrongly associating yours truly with Google) in an effort to undermine patent reform when it is so desperately needed due to serious injustices

The news about Michelle Lee -- truly good news which we mentioned here last night and again this afternoon -- has made it into corporate media (e.g. [1, 2]) and more blogs that focus on patents, e.g. Watchtroll citing this latter article to state: "Some are speculating that a meeting between Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, and Jared Kushner, the influential son-in-law of President-Elect Trump, may be the reason why Lee will be asked to remain as head of the Patent Office."

Remember that Watchtroll and his swamp like to blame Google for everything (they did some nasty pieces about it), if not insult Lee directly. They want us to believe that patent reform is the fault of Google and that Google is some kind of "pirate". They would rather see corruption at the top (with rumours about Rader) as long as it serves their agenda. "I would expect significant shake-up in PTO Senior Staff in the coming months," Patently-O wrote several days ago, but that didn't quite happen as far as the Director was concerned. To quote:

Recognize that these transitions and traditions are subject to immediate adjustment by the incoming Trump Administration. I would expect significant shake-up in PTO Senior Staff in the coming months: General Counsel, regional PTO Directors, and perhaps Solicitor and PTAB Director. However, every president struggles through how to deal with career federal employees loyal to the efforts of the prior administration.

When we speak about patent corruption we speak about all sorts of things, ranging from nepotism to vastly worse thing. One issue that emerged some days ago in Patently-O was akin to privateering. "The Bayh-Dole Act," explains this new post, "allows private entities to patent inventions developed through federal funding."

Sometimes they even sell these to trolls, as we showed here before. "The [James Love-run] KEI filing," the above notes, "is in the form of a letter to Inspector General of HHS (parent of NIH) asking for an investigation and action."

For those who are not aware of what's wrong with the above(not just privateering), basically it's about enriching someone using public (taxpayers') money and then letting that same someone get patents and tax the public (taxpayers) yet again. It is an incredibly huge injustice that ought to be tackled by the government. Another new example of privateering-like practices came from IP Watch just yesterday. To quote: "A range of civil society organisations have issued a public statement opposing the United States Army’s proposed grant of an exclusive licence on technology necessary to produce a Zika vaccine to French pharmaceutical company Sanofi. The letter cites concerns that the exclusive licence might violate US law and could lead to high priced medicines as consumers buy back taxpayer-funded research."

Also see yesterday's article "Why Patent Protection In The Drug Industry Is Out Of Control" (not exactly what it sounds like).

It sure sounds like more journalists and observers out there are starting to 'get' it. All these issues need to be tackled. Blaming "Google" for every bit of patent reform is immature -- possibly infantile enough only for Watchtroll to actually do. ⬆