Inventor group questions patent reform push

January 5, 2006, 10:31 AM —  IDG News Service — 

As several technology trade groups call for patent reform from the U.S. Congress this year, some individual inventors say changes to patent law will hurt them while helping huge companies.

Groups such as the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) advocate changes to the U.S. patent system, including a change to current legal precedence requiring courts to issue injunctions against accused patent infringers in most patent lawsuits. For many technology vendors, injunctions require them to stop selling the product containing the infringed patent.

The Patent Reform Act, introduced by Representative Lamar Smith in June, would require courts to consider whether the patent holder would suffer "irreparable harm" without an injunction. Smith, a Texas Republican, said in June the bill would "eliminate legal gamesmanship from the current system that rewards lawsuit abuses over creativity."

The quality of patents has been a big issue in the IT industry for years. In 1999, Amazon.com Inc.'s patent for a one-click shopping service was questioned by many Internet activists.

But some small inventors say changes proposed by Smith and several tech trade groups will make it easy for large companies to ignore them when they try to enforce their patents. "(Large tech vendors) don't like independent inventors nipping at their heels," said Ronald J. Riley, president of the Professional Inventors Alliance. "Companies went to Congress and said, 'Because we can commercialize faster than the inventor, he's a low-life or a troll.'"

The issue of patent injunctions has been in the news recently after BlackBerry handheld maker Research in Motion Ltd. (RIM) was sued by NTP Inc. over NTP patents related to wireless e-mail over mobile devices. The case is ongoing, but one possible outcome is that RIM could be forced to stop selling BlackBerry devices in the U.S.

In March, executives from Microsoft Corp., a member of both BSA and ITI, called for patent reform, saying the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) needs more funding. The number of patent lawsuits in the U.S. has risen from about 1,000 in the mid-'80s to more than 2,500 in 2002, Microsoft said.

Riley's group agrees the PTO needs more money, and his group has joined tech trade groups in calling for Congress to stop patent fee diversion from the PTO to the U.S. government general fund. Other than fee diversion, "there's nothing in their agenda that in my feeling has merit," Riley said of the tech patent proposals.

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

I like it!
Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
peer-to-peer

jfruh
Apple syncing patent can't come soon enough

pasmith
New Twitter features borrow from 3rd party clients

Esther Schindler
Open Source Changes the Software Acquisition Process

mikelgan
How to set up continuous podcast play on the new iTunes

David Strom
Five important Windows 7 mobility features

sjvn
Guard your Wi-Fi for your own sake                        

Sandra Henry-Stocker
Grepping on Whole Words

 

Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325

Join the conversation here

The Daily Tip

The Daily TipQuick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.

Hot tips:

Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.

Newsletters

Subscribe to ITWORLD TODAY and receive the latest IT news and analysis.

I would like to receive offers via email from ITworld partners.
By clicking submit you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in ITworld's privacy policy.
Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Marketplace