Bonum Certa Men Certa

“Conservative” Site Responds (Yet Again) to Misguided “Conservative” Efforts to Derail Patent Reform in the US

Glass roof



Summary: Patent trolls throw stones in glass houses, contributing to their own unpopularity, but some influential “Conservatives” continue to defend (conserve) them

THE MANY loud calls and very persistent lobbying for a so-called patent reform in the US, notably the PATENT ACT [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8], won't improve things, except perhaps for large corporations. They will, however, help put some additional burden on patent trolls, which is arguably better than what the US has got in place these days (trolls also target small businesses and startups with no legal budget). While fighting for big corporations' protectionism, the lobbyists can help destroy some of the 'little guys' who are actually trolls, or 'little trolls' (not the big trolls with glorified brands and very high levels of revenue).

Mytheos Holt, who described himself as an Associate Policy Analyst with the R Street Institute (RSI is an entity which calls itself "Free-market think tank advancing real solutions to complex public policy problems"), wrote in the “Conservative” (GOP) media the other day. It's yet another article in this site which challenges the “Conservative” stance on patent reform. Holt asks: "What do you call someone who supports Federal bureaucrats granting rights out of thin air, judges legislating from the bench about how those rights work, and spreads terror about technological progress (along with derogatory comparisons to Uber)?

"Sadly, some people seem to think you should call them “conservatives.”

"At least, that’s the only thing I can get out of looking at the so-called conservative opposition to patent reform, which just this week added yet more confusion to the debate when a group calling itself the Conservative Action Project put out a letter slamming the two major patent reform bills making their way through the House and Senate currently.

"It’s truly sad that this document could garner the signatures of the likes of Ed Meese and Club for Growth President David McIntosh, because as written, its concerns over patent reform are utterly contentless. It’s hard to talk of refuting arguments, when the arguments as presented mean nothing, but I will try for the sake of clarity."

In conclusion, writes Holt: "Patent Reform will do something that conservatives have done since the days of William F. Buckley, Jr: It will stop people from pleading the case for bad ideas. It is a terrible shame that so many so-called “conservatives” are pleading that exact case."

Sadly, a lot of self-acclaimed “Conservatives” (and GOP-leaning media) will continue to oppose patent reform and defend even large trolls such as Intellectual Ventures. IP Troll Tracker noted the other day that "there’s the option that Intellectual Ventures takes, which is to patent stuff so they can go sue people."

Well, actually, Intellectual Ventures often just buys patents in bulk and then uses them aggressively, against a maximal number of weak (or affluent) targets. If this is the practice which “Conservative” are willing to not only tolerate but actively defend, what are they conserving? it's a form of blackmail and racketeering in many cases.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Lookout, It's Outlook
Outlook is all about the sharing!
Updated A Month Ago: Richard Stallman on Software Patents as Obstacles to Software Development
very recent update
Is BlueMail a Client of ZDNet Now?
Let's examine what BlueMail does to promote itself
OpenBSD Says That Even on Linux, Wayland Still Has a Number of Rough Edges (But IBM Wants to Make X Extinct)
IBM tries to impose unready software on users
 
The 'Smart' Attack on Power Grid Neutrality (or the Wet Dream of Tiered Pricing for Power, Essentially Punishing Poorer Households for Exercising Freedom Like Richer Households)
The dishonest marketing people tell us the age of disservice and discrimination is all about "smart" and "Hey Hi" (AI) as in algorithms akin to traffic-shaping in the context of network neutrality
Links 29/11/2023: VMware Layoffs and Too Many Microsofters Going Inside Google
Links for the day
Just What LINUX.COM Needed After Over a Month of Inactivity: SPAM SPAM SPAM (Linux Brand as a Spamfarm)
It's not even about Linux
Microsoft “Discriminated Based on Sexuality”
Relevant, as they love lecturing us on "diversity" and "inclusion"...
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 28, 2023
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Media Cannot Tell the Difference Between Microsoft and Iran
a platform with back doors
Links 28/11/2023: New Zealand's Big Tobacco Pivot and Google Mass-Deleting Accounts
Links for the day
Justice is Still the Main Goal
The skulduggery seems to implicate not only Microsoft
[Teaser] Next Week's Part in the Series About Anti-Free Software Militants
an effort to 'cancel' us and spy on us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Permacomputing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Professor Eben Moglen on How Social Control Media Metabolises Humans and Constraints Freedom of Thought
Nothing of value would be lost if all these data-harvesting giants (profiling people) vanished overnight
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 27, 2023
IRC logs for Monday, November 27, 2023
When Microsoft Blocks Your Access to Free Software
"Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." [Chicago Sun-Times]
Techrights Statement on 'Cancel Culture' Going Out of Control
relates to a discussion we had in IRC last night
Stuff People Write About Linux
revisionist pieces
Links 28/11/2023: Rosy Crow 1.4.3 and Google Drive Data Loss
Links for the day
Links 27/11/2023: Australian Wants Tech Companies Under Grip
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Links 27/11/2023: Underwater Data Centres and Gemini, BSD Style!
Links for the day
[Meme] Leaning Towards the Big Corporate CoC
Or leaning to "the green" (money)
Software Freedom Conservancy Inc in 2022: Almost Half a Million Bucks for Three People Who Attack Richard Stallman and Defame Linus Torvalds
Follow the money
[Meme] Identity Theft and Forgery
Coming soon...
Microsoft Has Less Than 1,000 Mail (MX) Servers Left, It's Virtually Dead in That Area (0.19% of the Market)
Exim at 254,000 servers, Postfix at 150,774, Microsoft down to 824
The Web is Dying, Sites Must Evolve or Die Too
Nowadays when things become "Web-based" it sometimes means more hostile and less open than before
Still Growing, Still Getting Faster
Articles got considerably longer too (on average)
In India, the One Percent is Microsoft and Mozilla
India is where a lot of software innovations and development happen, so this kind of matters a lot
Feeding False Information Using Sockpuppet Accounts and Imposters
online militants try every trick in the book, even illegal stuff
What News Industry???
Marketing, spam, and chatbots
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 26, 2023
IRC logs for Sunday, November 26, 2023
The Software Freedom Law Center's Eben Moglen Explains That We Already Had Free Software Almost Everywhere Before (Half a Century Ago)
how code was shared in the 1970s and 80s