Bonum Certa Men Certa

AIPLA, IPO and NYIPLA Lobby Against Section 101 and Thomas Massie Wants to Stop PTAB

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) assures patent quality, as does Section 101, which PTAB is applying

Orrin Hatch's funding
Source: OpenSecrets



Summary: The lobby of the litigation 'industry' is desperately trying to derail patent reform -- to the point of paying millions of dollars to American politicians who try to pass anti-PTAB legislation (reminder above)

THE US patent system, where courts call the shots and the USPTO just stamps lots of dubious patents, shows quite clearly the result of decades of over-granting. When a patent system loses sight of its original goal/s it may simply become a patent-printing machine and litigation pipeline, detached fully from the image/vision of innovation.



Last weekend we covered in a lengthy post an effort to claim "agreement" that the US needs change because patent reform went "too far". The patent trolls' lobby, IAM, is speaking of consensus among the patent aggressors, calling "for legislative reform of Section 101". To quote:

The growing consensus around changing the laws concerning patent eligible subject matter in the US received another boost late last week when the New York Intellectual Property Law Association (NYIPLA) backed a joint proposal for reform from the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) and American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) . While changing section 101 of the US patent statute remains a significant challenge given the competing interests of various industries, the fact that several of the main players representing both operating companies and private practice lawyers are coalescing around proposed new language is significant.


Anyone who knows what the above groups stand for would immediately realise that those looking to undermine Section 101 just simply want a lot more litigation. IPO, for instance, is a malicious pressure group of patent aggressors and thugs like patent trolls; it even lobbies for software patents (explicitly); one can think of IPO as the "hired guns" of the patents fanatics and days ago it glorified firms that amass a lot of patents (irrespective of quality).

There's another effort to change the law these days. Some readers alerted us about it. Michael Loney calls it "Bill to abolish PTAB" and the person behind it receives campaign contributions. $136,602 is the grand total of contributions Thomas Massie has reported in the current election cycle. Here come the patent maximalists promoting the bill. Dennis Crouch echoes the same old propaganda (which he knows to be false). Innovations and patents are not the same thing; the latter can harm the former. "Although libertarians are somewhat divided on the role of intellectual property rights," he wrote, "Massie is firmly in the camp of treating them as strong property rights."

Abolishing or weakening PTAB would simply cause further declines in patent quality, not innovation. "How much do patents matter to innovation?"

This was the headline of this new article from Thomas F. Cotter, who is the Briggs and Morgan Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. "I used to ridicule Chief Justice Burger’s assertion in a famous case that whether certain bacteria were patentable," he said. In context:

Early in my career, I used to ridicule Chief Justice Burger’s assertion in a famous case that whether certain bacteria were patentable or not “may determine whether research efforts are accelerated by the hope of reward or slowed by want of incentives, but that is all.” If patents had only such a marginal impact on innovation, I wondered, why bother having a patent system in the first place? As the years have passed, however, I’ve come to see that maybe the chief was right—that, as Kevin Kelly writes, the technium evolves according to its own unique path and timetable. Perhaps the best the law can do is move it along a little faster or smoother than it otherwise might go. A rather humble mandate, perhaps; but at a time in which humility often seems to be in short supply, a bit refreshing for all that.


No bacteria should be patented. It shows just how out-of-touch the patent system has become.

A few days ago in Finance and Commerce Shobita Parthasarathy (University of Michigan) published an article titled "U.S. patent system out of step with today’s citizens". He authored a complaint about the patent microcosm, albeit using different terminology:

But the dynamics of the patent system have changed in recent decades. Public health activists have filed lawsuits stating that, rather than increasing access to technology, patents create monopolies that make good health unaffordable and inaccessible for many. In 2013, a coalition of patients, health care professionals and scientists challenged patents covering genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer at the U.S. Supreme Court. They argued the patents had led to expensive and poor-quality genetic tests available only through one company: Myriad Genetics, the patent holder.

Meanwhile, small farmers have organized protests against seed patents, suggesting they accelerate the corporate control of agriculture in ways that are damaging for their livelihoods, for innovation, for consumers and for the ecosystem.

And civil society groups have instigated legislative hearings and media campaigns arguing that patents implicitly provide moral certification for the development and commercialization of ethically controversial areas of research and development. Such campaigns began as early as the 1980s, when environmentalists, animal rights organizations and religious figures challenged the patentability of genetically engineered animals. They worried that by turning these animals into commodities, the patent system would transform people’s understanding of ownership and our relationship with the natural environment.

Patent system officials and lawyers tend to view this activism as seriously misguided. They argue that these citizen challengers lack the expertise to understand how the patent system works: It is a limited domain focused merely on certifying the novelty, inventiveness and utility of inventions. This technical and legal orientation is also embedded in the rules and processes of the system, which make it virtually impossible for average citizens to participate, except by submitting patent applications.


They have long attempted to shut the public out and buy themselves legislation using corruptible (easy-to-bribe) politicians like Orrin Hatch, who also tries to pass new anti-PTAB legislation on behalf of his sponsors.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Always Check Your Inputs
Garbage in, garbage out. Or wrong assumptions, wrong corollary.
 
Links 10/07/2025: "Apple Vs The Law" and Twitter Became Full Nazi Bar
Links for the day
Unable to Find Anyone to Work as Their Media Lawyer, Brett Wilson LLP Will Continue Losing Female Staff
What sort of sick person would wish to join Brett Wilson LLP to carry this baton?
Microsoft-Sponsored Propaganda Site Has Removed False 'Hit Piece' About Dr. Stallman (With Fake and Misrepresented Imagery) But Only After 4 Years
So they only removed that page some time around 2025, i.e. about 4 years after it had been published
Dan Neidle Said That Tax Evasion Facilitator Mr Zahawi (Working to Silence Bloggers Through Brett Wilson LLP) Targeted Not Only Him (But The Others Kept Quiet)
"Mr Neidle said after repelling Mr Zahawi he was contacted by bloggers and tweeters who had received similar threats. They deleted their work “and in most cases never commented publicly on anything again”."
SLAPP Funding Transparency Urgently Needed in the UK and Elsewhere (in Practice, Not Just in Theory)
Writing about crime - including Microsoft crime - is not a crime
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 09, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 09, 2025
Elodie Bergot Still Doing Illegal Things at the EPO, Based on the Local Staff Committee Munich
They keep taking away from the staff while compelling the staff to do illegal things
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: Extreme Testing and Golang Documentation in Geminispace
Links for the day
Vice President of the European Patent Office (EPO) Complains That Techrights Gives Visibility to Legal and Technical Issues at the EPO
"Follow-up on enquiries relating to Dir. 1218 and 1001"
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com and Various Slopfarms That Lie About "Linux" and Are Promoted by Google News
Google does not seem interested in tackling this problem
Links 09/07/2025: War Updates and Microsoft Moving to India to Cut Costs
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Was Always a 'Movement' of Inclusion of Tolerance
Even the licences themselves remove access barriers
Links 09/07/2025: "Subprime AI Crisis" and "OpenAI May Be in Major Trouble Financially"
Links for the day
Huge Piles of Legal Papers ('Paper DDoS') Do Not Impress Judges and Regulators
they just make judges and regulators even more suspicious of the eagerness to resort to 'paper DDoS'
Brett Wilson LLP Sent Over 5 Kilograms (or Over 12 Pounds) of Legal Papers! Because Writing About Microsoft Abuses is 'Illegal'.
How do you guys sleep at night? On a big pile of Microsoft money?
Extremism as a Weapon Against GNU/Linux (Microsoft Lunduke)
He ought to know the Halloween Documents. Wasn't he a Microsoft employee when these came out?
Lunduke Isn't Even Hiding His Anti-Linux Agenda (From "Linux Sucks" to "Linux is Pedophiles")
just trying to make a lot of trouble
Some People Use Computers to Get Actual Work Done
Tolerance and inclusion must extend to acceptance that some people don't agree with you, might never agree with you, and imposing what allegedly works for you on them is unreasonable
Example of "Old" Things That Still Work
The notion that something being "old" implies it must be discarded is typically advanced by those looking to sell more of something
Some Scheduled Maintenance Later Today
Typically the most vulnerable service during short interruptions is IRC
Computers Are Just a Tool
People don't get married because they love weddings, folks don't join the army because they love war, and most drivers don't drive to work because they love cars
Apple Way Past Its Prime
Apple deserves a decline
The FSF's SysOps Team Recovered From Serious Hardware Issue Within Hours
About half a day ago I noticed that all/most GNU/FSF sites were not reachable and thus reached out to a contact for any details
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 08, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 08, 2025
Slopwatch: Turning Bugs Into FUD About "Linux", Getting Basic Facts Wrong
all the screenshots are of fake articles; we don't want to link to any
Technical Reasons, Not Politics: With Wayland "it feels a lot like Linux from 20-25 years ago, which is horrendously frustrating, because it feels like we wasted one or two decades of progress and stability"
Lately, quite a few benchmarks were published to show Wayland compares poorly compared to what we had
PCLinuxOS Recovering From Fire
It looks like a nightmare scenario, where even backups onsite get destroyed
Links 09/07/2025: More Heatwaves, Officials Culled in Russia
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: XScreensaver and Resurrection
Links for the day
Links 08/07/2025: "Cyberattack Deals Blow to Russian Firmware" and "Cash Remains King"
Links for the day
FSF40 T-shirt message
by Alex Oliva
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Creativity, Gotify with NUT Server, and Sudo Bugs
Links for the day
More on "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
"pepe the frogs"
Links 08/07/2025: Sabotage of Networking Infrastructure, Microsoft XBox Game Pass Deemed “Unsustainable”
Links for the day
Dalai Lama Succession as Evidence That Determined, Motivated People Can Reach Their Nineties
And we need to quit talking about their death all the time
Many Lawyers (for Microsoft) and 1,316 Pages to Pick on a Litigant in Person Who Exposed Serious Microsoft Abuses
Answers must be given
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Ancillary Justice and Small Web July
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 07, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 07, 2025