The Patent Reform Act - Congressional Quandary
Two Views of Innovation Colliding in Washington
“Congress is likely to write legislation that could again reshape the contours of innovation and entrepreneurship for perhaps decades to come, in ways that are hard to predict.”
It appears initially that Congress is about to create an attitude of “its simply part of the cost of doing business.” How?
“The Patent Reform Act of 2007, as it now stands, would shift the balance of power in the legal quarrels between patent holders and possible infringers by significantly limiting damage awards.”
Suppose I’m a wannabee infringer. I take the view that my exposure from damage costs is now within my budget. I go for it because the profit I can make minimizes my concerns.
Here’s the quandary;
“On the one hand, in changing the nation’s patent laws, Congress runs the risk of throttling the little guy — the Stephen Wozniaks and the Steven Jobses — who strike out from their garages with novel ideas that change the world. On the other hand, consumers have clearly benefited from the ability of large technology companies like Intel and Microsoft to use their prodigious market power to drive down prices.
If we limit the incentive of the individual inventor in a garage to transform an entire industry, will there still be enough innovation in the corporate research labs of industrial giants?”
In light of huge patent settlements like the $612.5 million award that NTP Inc. won from Research In Motion, the maker of the popular BlackBerry wireless device, or the $1.52 billion award that Lucent briefly won against Gateway Inc. and Microsoft, we begin to hear folks like Mark A. Lemley, an intellectual-property scholar at Stanford who has testified in support of the legislation, saying “I can’t think of a straight-faced argument that you as a patent owner are entitled to more than your invention has contributed to a product.”
Somehow makes sense but this is a first glance for me. More will be revealed once Congress gets their brains wrapped around this.
Tags: Corporate-Research, Individual-Inventors, Innovation, Patent-Laws, Patent-ReformRelated Stories
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