Tech giants, banks win on patent reform
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Technology and financial services firms won a key patent reform victory Friday when the House approved legislation the industries have pushed for years by a vote of 220-175.
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(InfoWorld) - Patent reform legislation before the U.S. Congress would kill the value of patents and allow companies from other countries to steal U.S. intellectual property, a group of inventors said Thursday. About 20 inventors and U.S. company executives, visiting Washington, D.C., encouraged Congress to defeatÂ the Patent Reform Act, a version of which passed the House of Representatives earlier this month. The Senate has not yet voted on its version of the bill. The legislation "will weaken the patent system," said Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway and the AutoSyringe. "It will devalue patents. It will be a disincentive for people to invest in the future." Several large tech vendors, including Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco, support the legislation, which would allow courts to change they way they assess damages in patent infringement cases. Currently, courts generally consider the value of the entire product when a small piece of the product infringes a patent, and the legislation would allow courts to base damages only on the value of the infringing piece. The legislation would also allow a new way to challenge patents after they've been granted. Supporters say the bill is needed because patent infringement lawsuits have gotten out of hand. It's too easy for patent holders to sue and collect huge damage awards when a small piece of a tech product is found to infringe, supporters argue. Microsoft this month praised the House passage of the legislation, saying lawmakers voted to "support American innovation and to preserve incentives for progress." But Peter Volanakis, president and COO of Corning, said the legislation would be an invitation for its competitors in Asia to repeatedly challenge his company's patents. "This encourages infringement, plain and simple," he said. "It is much easier to infringe patents with this legislation." The patent reform legislation would also "undermine" Corning's ability to invest in new products, Volanakis added. Steve Perlman, inventor of WebTV and lead developer of Apple's QuickTime, said he was surprised to learn of the legislation when he read of the House passage of the bill. As he's begun to contact lawmakers about his opposition to the legislation, their staffers are "stunned" to hear of tech startups that are opposed to the bill, Perlman said. Small inventors and startups were mostly ignored during hearings on the bill, Perlman added. One of the goals of the bill is to harmonize U.S. patent laws with the rest of the world. But the U.S. now has the best environment for startups and entrepreneurs, Perlman said. "I don't want to have the startup economy they have," he said. "I want the one we have." Perlman, founder and CEO of Rearden, and Kamen, founder of DEKA Research & Development, both said changes to the U.S. patent system are needed. But the legislation largely doesn't address the real needs -- more patent examiners and more money for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, they said. Perlman has a patent he applied for five years ago still awaiting examination, he said. "Let's first make the system we've got today work the way it's supposed to work," Perlman said. Congress should also wait to see the effects of a May 2006 Supreme Court ruling, in which justices overturned the long-held practice of issuing injunctions against infringing products in nearly all patent cases, Perlman said. That ruling should have a large effect on so-called patent trolls, he said. "There already has been a huge change" in U.S. patent law because of the Supreme Court ruling, he said.
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BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. suffered a somewhat mixed ruling in its legal battle with patent holding company NTP Inc.
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The US Court of Appeals has ruled that Lawsuits in Motion - aka Research in Motion - did indeed violate patents owned by intellectual property holding company NTP.
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(InfoWorld) - Patent overhaul legislation thatÂ passed the U.S. House of Representatives FridayÂ still faces significant opposition as it heads to the Senate, opponents said. The House bill, supported by several large tech vendors, would tighten the way courts assess patent infringement damages and add a new way to challenge patents after they've been granted. Currently, courts generally consider the value of the entire product when a small piece of the product infringes a patent; the bill would allow courts to base damages only on the value of the infringing piece. DespiteÂ support from such tech vendors as Microsoft, IBM, and Symantec, the bill faces significant opposition from small inventors, many pharmaceutical companies, several small tech vendors, and labor unions. The tech supporters of patent reform have called for the changes for five years. "I would not throw a party just yet," said Bobbie Wilson, director in the litigation department at the Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin PC law firm, based in San Francisco. "Congress has tried to address patent reform before, starting off with a bang and ending with a whimper." Wilson, who supports parts of the bill and questions other parts, said she's a "bit pessimistic" that patent reform legislation will pass before the November 2008 elections. "Remember that there is a whole cottage industry, from the so-called trolls to the patent litigators, who are heavily invested in the status quo," she added. "They will be lobbying hard and spending substantial sums of money to water down or dilute any reform." Opponents will focus hard on the debate in the Senate, added Ronald Riley, president of the Professional Inventors Alliance, a trade group that opposes the House bill. The 45-vote margin in the House is not enough for the Senate "to see it as a mandate," Riley said. Riley's group was among those recruiting labor unions to oppose the bill. In July and August, three labor unions, including the giant AFL-CIO, came out against the House bill. Groups opposed to the bill are going to target lawmakers who support the legislation during the 2008 elections, "regardless of what might happen in the end," Riley said. "We don't care if they get mad," he said. "They can't do anything worse to us than they're doing now. There has to be a price for being bought." Riley and other opponents of the bill argue that it would allow large companies to steal patented inventions from small companies without fear of repercussions. When large tech vendors steal intellectual property and "ship it off to India, everybody loses," Riley said. "This is about jobs." Supporters of the bill argue it's needed because the number of patent infringement lawsuits and size of awards have exploded in recent years. It's too easy for patent holders to sue and collect huge damage awards when a small piece of a tech product is found to infringe, supporters argue. The House passage of the bill was "a major victory for U.S. innovation and competitiveness," John W. Thompson, chairman and CEO of Symantec, said in a statement. "This landmark legislation is the first comprehensive modernization and revision of the patent law in 55 years." But Wilson said the House bill largely ignores the biggest problem with the U.S. patent system -- that an underfunded Patent and Trademark Office lacks examiners and often loses experienced employees due to poor salaries. While the bill would make "sweeping changes" in the way patents are prosecuted and whether they are litigated, the bill's post-grant review provision targets the wrong point of the patent-issuing process, she said. "That's kind of like closing the barn after the horse is gone," she said. "Most of the problem is with bad patents." Representative Howard Berman, a California Democrat and main sponsor of the Patent Reform Act, has also introduced a bill to increase funding at the Patent and Trademark Office. He said Friday he will continue to push for the legislation to be passed.
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NEW YORK  -Stocks rallied on Friday as strong results from Research in Motion lifted the technology sector while a report of another overseas investment in a U.S. investment bank boosted financial stocks.
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A United States appeals court upheld a finding of patent infringement against Research In Motion Ltd. yesterday, but struck down part of the ruling and sent it back to a lower court for further proceedings.
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U.S. Supreme Court tosses out charges against banks that helped tech companies go public in the late '90s. But thwarted investors still have options.
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Experts tell lawmakers the broken patent system chills innovation and feeds lawyers and trolls. Will something finally be done? Luke O'Brien reports from Washington.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. House of Representatives hasÂ passed a bill to overhaul the nation's patent system, overcoming objections by many Republicans, small inventors and some labor unions. Passed on Friday, the Patent Reform Act,Â supported by several large tech vendors including Microsoft and IBM, would allow courts to change they way they assess damages in patent infringement cases. Currently, courts generally consider the value of the entire product when a small piece of the product infringes a patent; the bill would allow, but not require, courts to base damages only on the value of the infringing piece. The bill would also allow a new way to challenge patents within one year after they've been granted. The HouseÂ passedÂ the ActÂ by a vote of 225-175. The Senate has not yet acted on a similar piece of legislation. However, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a statement on Thursday saying it opposes the bill. It said that the changes in assessment of damages would "introduce new complications and risks reducing incentives to innovate." The OMB objections raise the possibility that President George Bush could veto the legislation. Large tech vendors have been pushing for patent reform for close to five years. The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the Business Software Alliance, and the Computing Technology Industry Association, all praised the House for passing the bill. House passage is a "significant step toward improving our patent system," said Mark Bohannon, SIIA's senior vice president of public policy. Asked about the OMB's opposition to the bill, Bohannon said recent changes have addressed many concerns. Apportionment of damages, one of the OMB's major concerns, needs to change, he added. "If we don't address the problem, we're not going to improve the system," he said. Many Democrats and some Republicans argued the bill is needed because patent infringement lawsuits have gotten out of hand. It's too easy for patent holders to sue and collect huge damage awards when a small piece of a tech product is found to infringe, supporters argued. The patent system "is getting near broken," said Representative Howard Berman, a California Democrat and primary sponsor of the bill. "Doing nothing is not a good answer for a Congress that wants the economy strong." Opponents argued the bill favors tech giants at the expense of small inventors. "The legislation ... helps a small group of powerful people," said Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican. Representative Marcy Kaptur, an Ohio Democrat, noted that between 1993 and 2005, four major tech vendors supporting the bill paid out US$3.5 billion in patent infringement settlements. But those same unnamed tech vendors had revenues of $1.4 trillion during that time period, she said. Tech vendors want to reduce patent infringement costs "not by changing their obviously unfair and often illegal business practices, but by persuading Congress and the Supreme Court to weaken U.S. patent protections," she said. "We ought to stand up for American inventors." The bill also sets into motion a change in the way patents are awarded, from the first-to-invent system unique to the U.S. to the first-to-file system used by the rest of the world.
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As reforms trickle in, the telecom industry is still subject to patent abuse.
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In the first of a series of patent disputes regarding its claims to rights to technologies used in MP3 audio codecs, French telecommunications firm Alcatel-Lucent -- which now owns the IP first conceived by Bell Laboratories -- was awarded $1.5 billion in a jury verdict against Microsoft in a federal district court in Seattle this afternoon.
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U.S. lawmakers returning from their  summer break are expected to consider patent law changes that  have pitted two of America's most invention-dependent  industries against each other.
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Biotech and high technology, two key Massachusetts industries, are often seen as allies -- innovation-driven businesses that depend on a highly educated workforce. But this week they're on opposite sides of a fight playing out in Washington: How to overhaul the nation's patent system.
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U.S. lawmakers returning from their summer break are expected to consider patent law changes that have pitted two of America's most invention-dependent industries against each other.
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Patent infringement decision leads to one of the largest patent decisions in history.
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Could bring US patent awards in line with rest of world A proposed law revolutionising US patent legislation has passed through a vital committee of the House of Representatives. The bill has got further than previous attempts at such reform.â¦