Big Software won’t like this article. http://ipwatchdog.com/2011/07/10/torpedoing-patent-rights/id=18022/ calling PGR (post grant review) a torpedo that needs to be disarmed (removed from patent reform legislation).
It exposes what Big Software is up to in this PGR portion of their effort to legislatively extract themselves from the huge patent liability they face as a result of their choice to suppress and conceal their software inventions rather than file patents. They are getting hit with huge patent judgments now that others are getting patents after having independently invented the concealed and suppressed inventions. An anti-Google contingent of Big Software players (Apple, RIM, EMC, Ericsson, Sony, and Microsoft) outbid Google and bought Nortel’s patent portfolio for $4.5 billion to gain a portfolio of patents. That shows the kind of money involved in Big Software’s attempt to regain a patent position and prevent others from getting competing patents. Prior user rights provisions in this abominable patent reform bill is Big Software’s primary ploy to escape liability. But, whining about “bad patents” (other people’s patents on items Big Software invented but concealed) is another Big Software ploy to try to justify endless challenges under three different procedures, including PGR. Thanks to Judge Michel for exposing their game.
Why should we kill nearly all patents, destroy small inventors and cripple small business to give Big Software a bailout from their bad legal decision to conceal their inventions? It was their deliberate choice, and besides small businesses keep their jobs here while Big Software sends their jobs overseas.
I strongly agree that this PGR torpedo needs to be disarmed, in fact this whole patent reform bill except for the provision ending fee diversion, before it sinks America’s creative small businesses in their infancy and with them the American economy.