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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: 2) by Rune of Doom on Thursday May 22 2014, @07:48PM
Having the Invisible Hand shoved so far up his ass that it works his mouth like a Muppet, I mean. I'd worry about higher brain functions, but its obvious that those get surgically removed upon election to the Senate. (Sometime between swearing in and getting committee assignments is my best guess as to when.)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 22 2014, @09:10PM
The 'invisible hand' works only in the case of no market interference. Unnatural monopolies (such as granted by patents, gov regulations, bribes, etc) are a market distortion. Once you add in a distortion it does not work.
Like most economic theories they *only* work if there is no external factor upsetting the apple cart. For example communism sounds good on paper. Yet fails to take into account people being lazy dicks. Pure capitalism (with its invisible hand) only works if there is no market interference and I mean NONE.
We in the US have a blend as people also want to work social items into our economy. That only works if you can get the policies right and do not have greed in the mix. Which does not work because there are metric tons of it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by monster on Friday May 23 2014, @07:35AM
Don't forget to add "perfect competition" and "low barriers to new participants" to the mix. Else you end up with cartels, price fixing, collusion and some other nasties.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 23 2014, @03:01PM
.Don't forget to add "perfect competition" and "low barriers to new participants" to the mix. Else you end up with cartels, price fixing, collusion and some other nasties.
I meant NONE. That is market interference. Like communism it leaves out people are dicks. The market can be manipulated by people as well as government.
All econ theory assumes there are no bad players. The reality is, a good majority are.
Most econ theory works on iteration 1 and maybe iteration 2 and they rarely look forward to iteration 10.
This book talks mostly about how market manipulation has nasty side effects too
http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/ [steshaw.org]
It is somewhat flawed in its conclusions but a good read. I like it because it is a good framework to show what regulations will do. You can have good ones and bad ones with major side effects.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday May 23 2014, @10:59PM
Doesn't look like there was much interference here. Just the free market determining the price of a congressperson.