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The EFF reports that Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy has announced that he is taking the Innovation Act off the Judiciary Committee's agenda. According to Senator Leahy's official statement:
Unfortunately, there has been no agreement on how to combat the scourge of patent trolls on our economy without burdening the companies and universities who rely on the patent system every day to protect their inventions. We have heard repeated concerns that the House-passed bill went beyond the scope of addressing patent trolls, and would have severe unintended consequences on legitimate patent holders who employ thousands of Americans.
I have said all along that we needed broad bipartisan support to get a bill through the Senate. Regrettably, competing companies on both sides of this issue refused to come to agreement on how to achieve that goal.
However, the Innovation Act passed 325-91 in the House with strong bipartisan support, as well as massive support from industry as well, and the President has signalled his support for the initiative. The EFF comments:
Leahy effectively deferred a problem—a serious problem he readily admits exists—in order to please the pharmaceutical, biotech, and university lobbies that are hardly the victims of patent trolls anyway... What Senator Leahy really means, is that he does not support a deal and is willing to be the final roadblock.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by weeds on Thursday May 22 2014, @06:27PM
"Regrettably, competing companies on both sides of this issue refused to come to agreement on how to achieve that goal."
That's what we have you for.
Get money out of politics! [mayday.us]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Thursday May 22 2014, @07:23PM
You beat me to it, have a point.
Those guys are supposed to represent the will of the people. Why does it matter what companies think?
Before someone objects that companies have the expertise and old geezers don't, let's remember that the point of paying so many idiots in DC (or London, or Brasilia, or Brussels) is that _they_ are supposed to agree based on competing expert input (a-k-a bribe comparisons).
If legislation is now defined as the ratification of an agreement between companies, can we make it official and only pay one single guy to say "yes" in congress? We can sell those shiny buildings for a pretty penny, and save maintenance costs too.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday May 22 2014, @09:33PM
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 23 2014, @09:42AM
The will of the people? Most people don't even know, care to know and wouldn't really care if they knew.
If politicians keep getting reelected after listening to lobbyists it should be no surprise they listen to lobbyists more than the voters.
If the voters actually didn't like this it's their own fault - they failed in their responsibility to:
0) be informed
1) provide feedback
2) vote for better candidates if feedback didn't work.
BUT the truth is more that most voters don't care about such stuff (they care and vote on "hot button" topics[1]). Only a minority cares.
I suspect the politicians do actually care about their ratings and the opinion polls. When enough voters start to really care, that's when you get stuff like the recent marijuana legislation. Or in the past - giving blacks and women the right to vote.
[1] like abortion, gay marriage etc. Of course the fact that the USA is quite strongly (and somewhat "neatly") divided in two on such issues may allow the "ruling class" to more easily herd voters into either the D or R pens. But if they were instead split on other "important issues" that the ruling class also didn't really care about, a similar thing would happen too. The D and Rs will probably split the votes on those issues, and 95% will vote for D/R and the ruling class will lobby D+R on issues that they care about and get the laws they want.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday May 22 2014, @10:11PM
No. This isn't some committee overreaching. In a perfect world the senators that passed the bill would have read it, discussed it between themselves and industry representatives, and then voted on it. In the real world some lobbyist shoved an half-baked bill some company's lawyers or some 20 something Harvard grad wrote without much wide considerations that the senators voted on without reading since the party said it was just a few small straightforward fixes to kill off patent trolling.
In all likelihood the senate judiciary committee heard complaints from legitimate businesses (universities and pharmaceuticals) saying the bill will hurt their interests and decided to stop the bill since they know the bill was never intended as a reform.
Personally, I'd would much rather see a real reform on the patent laws being passed by the whole of congress instead of all this stopgap measures you seen every other year.
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