patent

There are some people who simply, bizarrely do not like intellectual property. Some are full-blown Leftists – who do not like private property at all. (But don’t you dare try to take for the Collective the smart phone on which they’re Tweeting their disdain for private property.) Others are to varying degrees small “L” libertarian. Who somehow bizarrely delineate between physical property (which they’ll protect) and intellectual property (which they won’t). Who would have arrested a thief leaving Tower Records with an armful of CDs – but who is even as I type downloading-without-paying that exact same music.

Almost inarguably, no private entity is more enmeshed with the Barack Obama Administration – than is Google. This has been – in way too many ways for an allegedly free market economy – the Google Administration.

Behold Mark Cuban – a wildly successful entrepreneur. He in 1995 co-founded Broadcast.com – and in 1999 Yahoo! way overpaid $5.7 billion for it. Ever since, Cuban has in Donald Trump-like fashion built himself into a brand – The Entrepreneur. Like Trump, he loves embodying the pursuit of professional victories. Like Trump, he turned his doing-business-vision into a high-ratings network television show (well, Trump turned his into two).

Over the last several decades, trial lawyers have found increasingly “creative” ways to use the legal system to enable themselves to cart off huge portions of legal settlements for themselves. Some of these high profile abuses made headline news, such as the class action exploitations of the 1990s. But actually being required to take a case to court does come with expense, and wanting to enhance their riches trial lawyers have found some new legal system weaknesses to exploit for less out of pocket expense.

There are currently four patent “reform” bills being considered by Congress. Patents are a way innovators protect their ideas – which is how we as a society protect our continued economic viability. If people who invent cool stuff can’t protect their cool stuff from thieves – they’ll stop inventing cool stuff.

In a welcome show of bipartisanship, the U.S. Senate took a significant step in the direction of freer global trade in April. The Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 (TPA), cosponsored by Sens. Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), is designed to fast-track approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a landmark trade agreement currently under negotiation by the United States and 10 other Pacific Rim countries.

You’ve heard the phrase “patent trolls,” yes? Certainly not a positive sounding term. I mean – trolls?How positive an image does that conjure? The Media are almost always opposed to all things good. So when they with near unanimity help promulgate a term – you need to (re)contemplate its definition.

Mythological trolls — described as old and ugly creatures living under bridges or in caves — are known for one central feature: generally troublesome and injurious to human enterprise. Much of the same can be said for today’s patent troll — the dubious business entity again drawing the ire of Congress that exists solely to acquire patents and make claims of infringement in court.