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posted by NCommander on Monday June 02 2014, @12:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-this-crap-again dept.

Ars Technica How the patent trolls won in Congress

Trial lawyers are heavy donors to Democratic politicians, including Reid. A Washington Post article on Reid's fundraising during his 2010 campaign noted big-money fundraisers taking place at a Florida trial lawyer's home, as well as one held in California by the top securities class-action law firm, now named Robins Geller Rudman & Dowd.

They weren't the only ones lobbying against this bill, which was a first-of-its-kind proposal aimed squarely at "patent trolls." Universities and invention promotion groups like Edison Nation were vocal throughout the process, and Leahy noted the university opposition in his statement killing the bill. Companies that rely on heavy patent licensing as part of their business, including Qualcomm and Dolby, lobbied through the Innovation Alliance.

While those groups may celebrate the end of this bill, they weren't able to orchestrate the political shutdown that occurred Wednesday. "They were active throughout the entire process, but they don't have that kind of money, power, and juice," said the tech sector lobbyist. "This was entirely done by the pharmaceutical industry and the trial lawyers."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday June 02 2014, @01:47PM

    by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Monday June 02 2014, @01:47PM (#50208) Homepage Journal

    The problem is universities (colleges for Americans) operate almost universally on a for-profit basis. Even if they were classified as 501(c)(3)'s, and limited in what they could use their money for, I'm pretty sure you'd still get the end result. What we need is a new type of classification for public institutions to end this kind of BS, which limit the amount of control a university has over their students, as well as ensuring their funding goes for classes/professors/university improvements, and not building huge commercial complexes to bring in more money [wikipedia.org]

    I do feel that universities help a fair number of people reach their goals in lifes, and higher education remains important for many fields, but the cost of said education is so high, you either succeed then spend the next 10 years in debt, or fail, and spend the rest of your life in debt (a friend of mine has been paying off college loans for 8-ish years at this point).

    I dropped out after flunking CS (I was a criminal justice major my junior year) and found a well paying engineering job due to some very unique circumstances, but I know I'm an outer in this regard.

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