White House May Name Patent Reform Opponent As New Head of Patent Office 211
An anonymous reader writes The Obama Administration is set to appoint Phil Johnson, a pharmaceutical industry executive, as the next Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, according to sources. The move is likely to anger patent reform advocates given Johnson's past efforts to block legislation aimed at reining in patent trolls, and in light of his positions that appear to contradict the White House's professed goal of fixing the patent system. The top job at the Patent Office has been vacant for around 18-months since the departure of previous director David Kappos in early 2013. Currently, the office is being managed by former Googler Michelle Lee, who was appointed deputy director in December. Earlier this month, Republican Senators led by Orrin Hatch (R-UT) sent a letter to President Obama that praised Lee but that also described the current USPTO management structure as "unfair, untenable and unacceptable for our country's intellectual property agency."
Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
At first I was fooled. Copyrights. Patents. Guantanamo Bay. What is it with this guy.
Re:Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
Well I got my free healthcare so sucks to be you! haha!
Free? I don't think you understand what "free" means. And you got your "free" health care in part by a huge giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry, an industry whose abuses of the patent system are legendary.
Classic $Politician (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe I'm missing something as I was born in '88, was there a time when politicians weren't appointing people based on who would be best for the major corps in the industry.?How is this anything but the standard Corruption which we can expect from all future presidents?
Re:Obama (Score:3, Insightful)
Well I got my free healthcare so sucks to be you! haha!
You keep using that word "free", I don't think you really know what it means.
Re:Classic $Politician (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama seems to be the first mainstream US presidential candidate in a long time to "talk the talk" to the kind of people who read Slashdot. The others have been spouting ignorant crap or simply ignoring the topics that most Slashdotters care about. Therefore Obama is the first president that we can be disappointed in -- the others were known bad before they became presidents.
Re:Why does Obama keep doing this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this so hard to understand?
First - dispel from your mind there are two parties called Democrats and Republicans who are polar opposites.
The truth is there are 2 factions (some of each in each of the two parties): oligarchs and representatives.
The oligarchs are people like Dianne Feinstein (D) and Mike Rogers (R). The representatives are people like Ron Wyden (D) and Justin Amash (R).
The oligarchs generally believe in more power for them so they can rule you. They understand they cannot openly come out and say this. Thus, their method of achieving their ends is to propose wildly unpopular legislation which they use to demagogue "the other guy's party" on different technicalities. This creates the boogie man they need to raise campaign funds and scare the people into voting for them rather than the "evil other guy".
Currently the Oligarchs are in the majority in both houses and they have the white house. They are also well entrenched in both the DNC and RNC.
Obama is and always was one of them. The republicans have been screaming this for ages. Most of them though just didn't realize that you were screaming your head off about Bush being like this, that you were right too.
Welcome to having your eyes opened. Join the club.
ObamaNation (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why does Obama keep doing this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seeing as I take 100% of my opinion on the man due to his policies and lying to the public, and absolutely none of it from the color of his skin, I was simply pre-empting the "Obama is our Lord and savior, if you don't like his policies you're just a racist" crowd in hopes of ending it there. Sorry you couldn't see it for what it is. It always amazes me that the people who want to ignore skin color and treat everyone based on their actions and policies are the ones labeled racists, while those who want to treat people different based on their skin color are somehow the champions of "equality". In other words, fuck off imbecile
Extremely scary (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a very dark development. ... after a 3 year delay .. a loophole in the law kicks in (basically they use 35 USC 135 (c) to trigger 35 USC 156 (a) ) and so they get 20 years from issuance date subtract 18 months until the patent expires. Their goal is to delay the patent issuance until the final quickly issued patent is about to expire .. then they will get the patent office to issue the new patents (the deliberately delayed ones). This allows them extended monopoly/royalties on LTE technology. This tactic is widely used. For example there are still patents from HDTV in the 1990s that have still not been issued. The patent law was changed in the early 90s to "prevent submarining" .. but a loophole was placed in there intended for pharmaceutical companies (cause FDA drug approvals can take a decade so it's unfair that they only get 10 years of monopoly).. but the problem with the loophole is that everyone else (non-pharmaceuticals) can use it too.
The patent system is being abused such that it is preventing product launches and stifling innovation/invention by anyone other than large entities. For example, let's look at what's happening with LTE. Currently corporations are submarining many of these patents so that it will be impossible to make a non-infringing LTE base station or smartphone even 30 years after most of the currently known LTE patents expire. Not all the patents on LTE are even known (this is deliberate so that lawsuit can be filed at a later date). Anyway, what do I mean by submarining? They filed some of these applications years ago and then saw to it that SOME the patents have not issued (while a few are issued)
This appointment needs to be protested properly.
Re:Classic Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really simple. I do not think Obama is perfect and wonderful. But I think he is less harmful than Bush Junior was, because he's competent. He gets things done. I don't like everything he gets done, but he is the head of the executive branch, not the legislative branch. It's his job to get things done.
Expecting the president to change laws is treating him or her like an autocrat: a king. The president is not supposed to make policy; he or she is supposed to implement policies made by congress and the courts. What sucked about Bush was that he thought it was his job to "lead the nation" and he did a piss-poor job of it, with Congress' help.
We really need to get over our collective feudal attitude toward the presidency. The founding fathers understood that the president was not a king; George Washington famously refused to be named king. Why have we forgotten this principle?
Re:Classic Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
Is anybody surprised? Claim to support Net Neutrality and give the power to the Cable lobby. He's done this before and he'll do it again. Hypocrite-in-chief.
I don't know what the hell to think about Obama anymore. The guy we elected was smart, charismatic, capable, articulate; he ran a brilliant campaign that took out the heavily favored Hilary Clinton. He came across as a man with the intelligence, principles, and pragmatism to fix the nations problems... or at least not fuck it up as catastrophically as George W. Bush did. So where the hell did that guy go?
I remember the early Obama speeches when he wasn't just a speaker but an orator, he the fire of a black preacher... he had conviction. That was the inspiring thing about him. Yeah it was pretty words, but he seemed to really believe it. Now he just seems to mouth the speeches, like they're just empty words put there by his speechwriters. At times when people ask him questions he seems barely able to articulate an answer and to fumble for words... more and more, he's that barely-keeping-it-together guy we saw during the second debate against Romney. He seems dejected, run-down... and increasingly it seems like the administration can't do a damn thing right. They're as bad as Bush ever was on drone strikes and warrantless surveillance- worse, in fact- Guantanamo isn't shut, the VA is a clusterfuck, Iraq is falling apart again, the response to the Crimea was half-assed... and now this?
I still like the guy, as a person. I think he means well. But I get the impression that he's burned out, disengaged and depressed, that he spends his days staring at the ceiling of the Oval Office and counting the days until his Presidential Library opens and he gets to take lucrative speaking gigs. And that meanwhile, with the Commander in Chief checked out, the various special interests and agendas are having a field day, and doing what they do best- turning government of the people, for the people, and by the people into the plaything of moneyed special interests, the uber-rich, and the military-industrial complex. Anyway, that's my theory. I think he means well, and he came in trying to fight the machine, but it was one man against an entire machine. And the machine ultimately broke him.
Re:Classic Obama (Score:3, Insightful)
He just said today he was going to unilaterally start changing immigration policy. He's been behaving like an autocrat for quite some time now. Your X is bad therefore Y is good logic does not work, they're both the wrong lizard.
Ha Ha Ha (Score:4, Insightful)
"The guy we elected was smart, charismatic, capable, articulate; he ran a brilliant campaign that took out the heavily favored Hilary Clinton. He came across as a man with the intelligence, principles, and pragmatism to fix the nations problems"
I'm going to type something that will seem a slam against Obama, but that's really not my point (I'm not a fan of most politicians), read the whole post:
Where was the evidence for ANY of that? You were propagandized. All the democrat-run news networks told you he was "brilliant" and you bought it even though he sealed all his academic records (unlike all previous candidates) and you've still never seen them. The same people told you he was "capable" even though he'd never run ANYTHING, never been responsible for ANYTHING, never held a job that required ANY productivity or creativity. Now when he is unable to get things done, he blames the Republicans and those same news outlets help him (even though MOST presidents have had to deal with opponents in congress) Articulate? Have you ever seen him without a teleprompter? Sure all those same biased sources gushed about how "articulate" he was... but what was the true evidence? He stumbles and stutters like crazy without a teleprompter and even uses them to address elementary school kids (liberal Democrats ridiculed VICE Presidential candidate Palin for scribblying several words on her hand before giving a half-hour long speech without teleprompters). Was his campaign over Hillary TRULY "brilliant" or did she run a poor campaign (as she appears to be doing again) and was she jettisoned by a Democrat-leaning press that found a candidate it preferred to support? (Reminders: Hillary claimed the fairest coverage she got in 2008 was on Fox, and Bill is still bitter and said Obama "played the race card" against him and Hillary). As for "good intentions"... as the old saying goes: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". George Bush and his supporters would say HE had "good intentions"...
My point is that people are easily manipulated, and the techniques politicians and their armies of advisors and campaign staff use are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Obama's own team brags about their "mirco-targetting" and other campaign breakthroughs (which, if you THINK about it are all just ways of manipulating people). The problem is made worse when 9 out of 10 journalists in the US have repeatedly admitted to being aligned with the Democrats. When that combined propaganda machine "kicks-in" and works on behalf of one person (no matter the skin color, gender, etc) the population is sadly ill-equipped to see through the marketing smoke screen and ask questions about actual abilities, actual qualifications, etc. Obama had NO applicable resume for the Presidency (and Hillary's was just as thin (former First Lady, and recipient of a donated Senate seat). Those two 2008 candidates did NOT have the qualifications of an FDR, a JFK, a Reagan, and LBJ, etc. and no amount of PR and friendly news coverage could cure it.
Re: Classic Obama (Score:3, Insightful)
If the laws don't change then it's Obama's job to implement them as written - not decide that things need to change and carry out his own ideas. He may even be correct in that assessment but he does not have that power under the Constitution, so such actions are illegal. Do nothing Congress? Too bad, embarass them on prime time or whatever it takes to change things legally. It may well suck, but that does not change the rules. I realize he's been doing it anyway, so the point is merely academic.