"America Invents Act" AKA "Patent Reform Act" IS Bad For America!

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Please contact your Congressional Representatives to Vote "NO"!

A Vote For "Patent Reform" IS A Vote Against Inventors and Job Creators!

Recent Background ...

Pat Choate: The Back Room Politics of Patent Reform

Posted: February 28, 2011 02:05 PM

"As a start-up, Intel lacked the capital of competitors such as IBM, Motorola and Japanese manufacturers. What they did possess were unique inventions, patents and the protections provided by the U.S. Constitution - that is, their patent rights and the means to defend them in the federal courts.

Amazingly, Intel is among a handful of Big Tech corporations, including IBM and Cisco, which are lobbying the President and Congress to weaken patent laws in a way that will make infringement of the patents owned by others easier and deny to others the same opportunity that they had.

These companies use a business model termed "efficient infringement" by which they instruct their engineers to aggressively avoid doing a due diligence test as to whether the technology they are using is patented by others. The goal is to deniability in court whenever they are found to infringe and thus avoid paying the patent owner triple damages as current law provides.

The draft legislation that these Big Tech corporations drafted and persuaded the Senate Judiciary Committee to adopt in early February 2011 would make America's extraordinarily effective patent system more like that of Europe and Japan, which are structurally biased against small companies, entrepreneurs and inventors.

Their legislation would grant a patent not to the person who invented the creation but to the first-inventor-to-file the application at the Patent Office. The presumption is that an invention can simultaneously have multiple inventors and the winner is the one who beats the clock and gets the stamp first.

In practice, the existing U.S. patent system has no such problem determining who merits the patent. Of the more than 500,000 patent applications filed last year, there were only 47 contested patents as to who was the inventor. Moreover, the Patent Office has a well-oiled process to make that determination.

The real goal of this change is to take away what is known as the "grace period" - the one year prior to filing a patent application that inventors can use to reveal their secrets to potential investors and partners without worrying about their disclosures making their creation a "prior art" that is ineligible for a patent. This exists no where else and gives American inventors an advantage in their home country."

[INVENTOR] Carl Cooper: Patent Reform Act will hurt small businesses

http://www.rgj.com/article/20110315/OPED04/103150317/-1/TTM

"The 2011 Patent Reform Act, a bill supported by several lethargic multinational corporations, is before the U.S. House of Represent-atives. Many of these corporations have shipped jobs and manufacturing overseas, cut service, reduced quality and raised prices to help overcome their inability to innovate.

Some have stolen innovations from small companies and U.S. Courts have penalized them with millions of dollars in damages for that theft. The damage penalties have in turn led to this bill, which includes some provisions targeted against individual inventors and small companies in an effort to weaken their patent rights."

[INVENTOR] Robert McGinnis Letter to the editor: Patent Reform Act will hurt small business

By Robert McGinnis | Posted: Friday, March 4, 2011 9:41 am
http://m.bozemandailychronicle.com/mobile/opinions/article_61d1a5bc-467e-11e0-aad6-001cc4c03286.html

"For years the small business community has repeatedly warned Committee Chairman Sen. Leahy (D-Vt.) that provisions in Senate Bill S.23, the so- called Patent "Reform" Act, will hurt small businesses that depend on patent protection and will prevent job creation. Even worse S.23 will hurt everybody, especially small companies, by aggravating the patent office's huge patent application backlog, inadequate patent examiner corps and outdated computer system that Congress itself helped create by "fee diversion": the raiding of U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) generated fees for pet congressional spending. This USPTO mismanagement has now led to a crisis in the entire American patent system. Yet spurred on by intense lobbying by large multinational corporations, the committee is now attempting to rush Senate Bill S.23 to a Senate floor vote without even holding hearings."

Pat Choate The Back Room Politics of Patent Reform

Economist and Author Posted: February 28, 2011 02:05 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-choate/losing-americas-future_b_826137.html

"If President Obama and the Congress want to create more dynamic companies such as Intel, then they must recognize that Intel's advice on patents is short-sighted. The patent legislation that Intel, IBM and the other Big Tech corporations support will do nothing to cure the problems faced by the Patent Office.

The smartest move that the President and Congress can do now towards "Winning the Future" is to (1) enact legislation that will stop the diversion of patent funds to the Treasury, (2) return to the Patent Office the $810 million that has been taken away, (3) reject the bill that Big Tech supports (S. 23), and (4) have Congress hold hearings on what really needs to be done so that constructive legislation can be introduced in early 2012."

Ret. Chief Judge Michel Patent Reform: Michel Testifies to House IP Committee

http://ipwatchdog.com/2011/02/11/patent-reform-chief-judge-michel-testifies/id=15280/ "In my judgment, fixing the problem of PTO funding is far more important than enacting those provisions in recent legislative proposals that would alter court practices or add new processes inside the PTO if they further increase the PTO’s workload. So my principal recommendation is this: above all, fix the PTO funding problem. Make it possible for the PTO to clear the 700,000 backlog of applications and get current on new filings. To me, current means all examinations concluded within two years of filing. Note, I do not mean two years as the average delay; I mean every application examined within two years and either granted or denied. One year would be ideal, but two years might be tolerable.

Remember too that by law most applications must be published on the internet 18 months after filing. So given current delays, the invention is made public long before it is protected. It can be used without permission — and often without consequences — for all the months and years between 18 months and the eventual issue date. Although once granted, patents are a form of private property, until granted the inventor obtains no rights. Examination delays thus defeat private property rights or at least diminish their value.

The story is told that thousands of foreign engineers sit, not in labs doing research, but rather at computer screens reading U.S. patent applications that disclose new technology. Perhaps the story is only apocryphal, but the motivation can be understood."

Michele Nash-Hoff Is the First-to-File Patent Reform Bill right for America?

Business and Finance - Economy
BY MICHELE NASH-HOFF WEDNESDAY, 16 MARCH 2011 07:53

"In a February 2, 2011opinion article in The Hill’s Congress Blog, U. S. business & Industry Council President, Kevin Kearns, and Research Fellow, Alan Tonelson, wrote, "The principal advocates of the Leahy bill are the governments of Europe and Japan – along with boosters in China and India. They want the United States to ‘harmonize down’ to their inferior systems. They and the bill have it backwards. Advocates also include a handful of Big Tech transnational corporations that want to make easier and less costly the infringement of other’s patent rights. Their business model has a unique name: ‘efficient infringement.’

They also pointed out that the reforms of the Clinton era "doubled from 18 to 36 months the time required to process a patent, required the Patent Office to publish full patent applications on the Internet 18 months after filing – encouraging theft of American IP worldwide, and created a new post-grant challenge process to patent validity that can consume three or more years in bureaucratic proceedings inside the Patent Office. As a result, individual inventors who received 15 percent or more of all U. S. patents before the Clinton reforms got barely 5 percent last year."

Patent Reform Likely to Benefit Industry Giants More Than Start-Ups

http://www.genengnews.com/keywordsandtools/print/3/22326/

"Additionally, the America Invents Act is intended to align U.S. patent law more closely with the EU and Asian nations. Sounds like a solution in search of a problem. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, the U.S. still leads in number of patents filed with about 45,000, which is 28% of the total 162,900 filed in 2010.

The U.S. share fell 1.7% from 2009’s 45,600 patents, however, while patents filed by Asian nations rose last year; fourth-place China grew by 56%. But the reason for American decline is probably less because of the law than factors such as the quality of K–12 STEM education and the quantity of graduates pursuing jobs in those fields."

h2>10 Everyday Products From Lone Inventors - TheStreet http://www.thestreet.com/story/11036204/3/10-everyday-products-from-lone-inventors.html

Cruise Control

Cruise control, a boon to drivers on long highway trips, was invented by a man who could never use it.

Blind inventor Ralph Teetor, an engineer whose family owned a company that manufactured piston rings for major carmakers, patented the technology in 1945. It debuted in 1958 as a feature on that year's Chrysler Imperial and, two years later, was standard on Cadillacs.

His inspiration, as the story goes, was a chatty lawyer."

Kauffman Foundation Analysis Emphasizes Importance of Young Businesses to Job Creation in the U.S.

http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/kauffman-foundation-analy...

"Job creation is the number one issue facing families and policymakers during this economic recession, and this study shows that new businesses and entrepreneurs are the key factor in adding new jobs," said Carl Schramm, president and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation. "If the U.S. economy is going to have a sustained recovery, it will be up to entrepreneurs to lead the way."

Critics raise concerns at Commerce

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29002.html>

"Two former high-level managers at IBM and Microsoft are playing key roles in the Obama administration’s patent reform efforts, leading critics to question whether their involvement constitutes a breach of the administration’s ethics policy.

Opponents of the Obama administration’s position on patent reform say that David Kappos and Marc Berejka, who recently took top jobs in the Commerce Department, are wielding too much influence over a policy that stands to benefit both of their former companies.

As recently as March, Kappos, who was vice president and assistant general counsel for intellectual property at IBM, appeared before a Senate panel to express the company’s support for patent reform legislation making its way through Congress. And for more than a decade, Berejka worked in senior government affairs roles at Microsoft, including eight years as a lobbyist for the high-tech giant."

Leahy Meets IBM, Watson Super-Computer

Senator Speaks About Patent Reform At IBM Plant

http://www.wptz.com/r/27163863/detail.html

Harmonize? Our system is underfunded, but leads all others in quality of search and examination of patents

EU warns it lags behind in global innovation race

Law Experts Call For Flexible Patent Legislation

By Josh Smith (March 10, 2011 | 6:14 PM

[INVENTOR] Carl Cooper: Patent Reform Act will hurt small businesses

http://www.rgj.com/article/20110315/OPED04/103150317/-1/TT

“The 2011 Patent Reform Act, a bill supported by several lethargic multinational corporations, is before the U.S. House of Represent-atives. Many of these corporations have shipped jobs and manufacturing overseas, cut service, reduced quality and raised prices to help overcome their inability to innovate.

Some have stolen innovations from small companies and U.S. Courts have penalized them with millions of dollars in damages for that theft. The damage penalties have in turn led to this bill, which includes some provisions targeted against individual inventors and small companies in an effort to weaken their patent rights.”

Letter to the editor: Patent Reform Act will hurt small business

By Robert McGinnis | Posted: Friday, March 4, 2011 9:41 am

Pat Choate The Back Room Politics of Patent Reform

Economist and Author Posted: February 28, 2011 02:05 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-choate/losing-americas-future_b_826137.html

“If President Obama and the Congress want to create more dynamic companies such as Intel, then they must recognize that Intel's advice on patents is short-sighted. The patent legislation that Intel, IBM and the other Big Tech corporations support will do nothing to cure the problems faced by the Patent Office.

The smartest move that the President and Congress can do now towards "Winning the Future" is to (1) enact legislation that will stop the diversion of patent funds to the Treasury, (2) return to the Patent Office the $810 million that has been taken away, (3) reject the bill that Big Tech supports (S. 23), and (4) have Congress hold hearings on what really needs to be done so that constructive legislation can be introduced in early 2012.”

10 Everyday Products From Lone Inventors - TheStreet

http://www.thestreet.com/story/11036204/3/10-everyday-products-from-lone-inventors.html

Is the First-to-File Patent Reform Bill right for America?

Business and Finance - Economy
BY MICHELE NASH-HOFF WEDNESDAY, 16 MARCH 2011 07:53

“In a February 2, 2011opinion article in The Hill’s Congress Blog, U. S. business & Industry Council President, Kevin Kearns, and Research Fellow, Alan Tonelson, wrote, “The principal advocates of the Leahy bill are the governments of Europe and Japan – along with boosters in China and India. They want the United States to ‘harmonize down’ to their inferior systems. They and the bill have it backwards. Advocates also include a handful of Big Tech transnational corporations that want to make easier and less costly the infringement of other’s patent rights. Their business model has a unique name: ‘efficient infringement.’

They also pointed out that the reforms of the Clinton era “doubled from 18 to 36 months the time required to process a patent, required the Patent Office to publish full patent applications on the Internet 18 months after filing – encouraging theft of American IP worldwide, and created a new post-grant challenge process to patent validity that can consume three or more years in bureaucratic proceedings inside the Patent Office. As a result, individual inventors who received 15 percent or more of all U. S. patents before the Clinton reforms got barely 5 percent last year.”

Critics raise concerns at Commerce

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29002.html

“Two former high-level managers at IBM and Microsoft are playing key roles in the Obama administration’s patent reform efforts, leading critics to question whether their involvement constitutes a breach of the administration’s ethics policy.

Opponents of the Obama administration’s position on patent reform say that David Kappos and Marc Berejka, who recently took top jobs in the Commerce Department, are wielding too much influence over a policy that stands to benefit both of their former companies.

As recently as March, Kappos, who was vice president and assistant general counsel for intellectual property at IBM, appeared before a Senate panel to express the company’s support for patent reform legislation making its way through Congress. And for more than a decade, Berejka worked in senior government affairs roles at Microsoft, including eight years as a lobbyist for the high-tech giant.”

Kauffman Foundation Analysis Emphasizes Importance of Young

Businesses to Job Creation in the U.S.

http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/kauffman-foundation-analy...

"Job creation is the number one issue facing families and policymakers during this economic recession, and this study shows that new businesses and entrepreneurs are the key factor in adding new jobs," said Carl Schramm, president and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation. "If the U.S. economy is going to have a sustained recovery, it will be up to entrepreneurs to lead the way."

Myths and patent reform | opensource.com

http://opensource.com/law/11/3/myths-and-patent-reform

Patent Reform Likely to Benefit Industry Giants More Than Start-Ups

http://www.genengnews.com/keywordsandtools/print/3/22326/

“Additionally, the America Invents Act is intended to align U.S. patent law more closely with the EU and Asian nations. Sounds like a solution in search of a problem. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, the U.S. still leads in number of patents filed with about 45,000, which is 28% of the total 162,900 filed in 2010.

The U.S. share fell 1.7% from 2009’s 45,600 patents, however, while patents filed by Asian nations rose last year; fourth-place China grew by 56%. But the reason for American decline is probably less because of the law than factors such as the quality of K–12 STEM education and the quantity of graduates pursuing jobs in those fields.”

Patents, Reform and the Little Guy

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/opinion/08tue3.html?_r=1
Nam D. Pham, PhD "The Impact of Innovation and the Role of Intellectual Property Rights on U.S. Productivity, Competitiveness, Jobs, Wages, and Exports": http://www.theglobalipcenter.com/sites/default/files/reports/documents/NDP_IP_Jobs_Study_Hi_Res.pdf When patent reform isn’t really about patent reform By Brad Plumer http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-patent-reform-isnt-really-about-patent-reform/2011/08/05/gIQAtuqUwI_blog.html