Both sides of the patent reform debate have been giving Hilary Clinton cash

Timothy B. Lee writes

"On Friday night, Hillary Clinton revealed the names of the various companies and trade groups that have collectively given her millions of dollars in speaking fees since the beginning of 2014. Looking through the list, one thing that stood out to me was how many of the payments came from companies with a strong interest in the patent reform debate.

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"Overall, Clinton was paid speaking fees by about 50 companies and groups, receiving around $225,000 for a typical speech. Of those 50 organizations, at least five have a record of lobbying against reforms to the patent system, while three are in the pro-reform camp."

Vox

Unfortunatly I'm not convinced that the money is directly related to her stance or lack of it on patent reform.

The pro-reform names Lee mentioned: Cisco, eBay and Salesforce are all big businesses that would benefit from having a president beholden to them while of the five anti-reform names Xerox and Corning are not active anti-reform lobbiests, one of them is a pro patent lobbiest while two of them are technology companies. Other than the pro-patent lobiest, are the other businesses supporting her for patent reasons or other reasons?

If patent reform goes wrong

Let me start with a disclaimer that may soon become obvious to you all, I’m the least expert member of this panel when it comes to analyzing the specifics of the pending patent reform bills and how they will impact various constituencies. Luckily, the other panelists more than make up for my deficiencies.

If we try and look at the current patent reform debate objectively there are some overall themes it might be helpful to consider. One is what a poor job we have done as a community over the years presenting the importance of the patent system to the American public and our political leaders. That’s now come back to bite us.

IPWatchdog.com

Tech giants complain about US ITC misuse by trolls

 A consortium of tech giants have written to senior US politicians demanding a reform of the International Trade Commission, one of America's key federal watchdogs.

The business goliaths, represented by the ITC Working Group, claim patent trolls are unfairly using the commission to extract money from their coffers, and hamper innovation. The letter – signed by Google, Intel, Apple, Cisco, and 16 others – takes issue with Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930: this piece of law is routinely used by patent trolls.

It sounds rich hearing Intel, Apple, Cisco and others complaining – of all people – about organizations being outrageously litigious with patents. The tech world loves using patents to destroy upstarts or force them into an acquihire deal. Their beef appears to be that patent trolls don't actually make or design anything, as if they are unworthy opponents.

Full article at El Reg

UKIP bashes software patents

The UK Independence Party (UKIP) has slammed those pushing for software patents in the European Union and attacked rival political parties for failing to understand the software patent issue, and the damage it claims they could cause.
An emailed statement from them said: 'Software patents stifle innovation, unfairly favour big business, and curtail the rights and freedoms of individual computer programmers. Software patents can be used a tool to restrict freedom of ideas and freedom of expression. As a strong supporter of civil liberties and freedom of speech, this party could never support the introduction of such measures.'

More at ZDNet UK News

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Lib Dem reply

Liberal Democrat IT Spokesman Richard Allan said

"We have been actively working on this issue in the Lib Dems. There is a major flaw in the UKIP position. They oppose the Directive because it comes from the EU. However, if there were no EU and therefore no Directive as UKIP want then this does not necessarily mean the issue of software patents will go away.
"We would instead be left with national Patent Offices in each member state deciding their policy, no doubt under pressure from large US interests to follow the US route and allow wide patentability for software.
"Given the recent record of UK-US relations and the position of the UK Govt and Patent Office in supporting the current EU Directive I would not have any confidence that an 'independent' UK decision on this would be better than a collective EU one. We might rather find our Government signing up to a more US-like model without the collective will of all EU states to resist this."