"As recently as last night, we had high hopes that a meaningful reform effort would move forward this week."<p>What appears to have <i>possibly</i> happened here, by virtue of the fact that they appeared to have such high hopes, is that they let up on the battle and effort banking on what they were told by those they were in contact with. Who may have been mislead themselves.<p>I've seen this pattern before and in fact I've used it against adversaries (not in the patent area obviously). And it was used against me (which I'm guessing is where I learned it in the first place.)<p>You allow the other side to think they are going to win and so they end up easing up just a bit on the effort because in their mind they think they have pretty much either won the battle or have come real close to winning. (Isn't this also done in sports?)<p>I learned this lesson early on in business (out of college) when I lodged a complaint against the electric company for pulling the power to some machinery. The electric company immediately told me I was right! And that they would, in so many words, compensate me for the lost profits and the like (not that exactly but close enough it was a long time ago).<p>As time dragged on they still mildly assured me that they were going to do something. After perhaps 6 months past and I drew a line in the sand (all this dating is from memory btw.) At that point they finally just told me they weren't going to do anything and "well to bad sorry".<p>But by that point I had lost my initial anger and steam and just decided to forget about it.<p>Had they told me from day one (or week one) that they didn't agree I would have approached the situation much differently and mounted a different strategy. I didn't have a strategy because, well, I didn't think I needed one.
Almost all troll activity I've noticed has been around software patents or business method patents, and generally involves patents that should not have been issued in the first place.<p>I'd rather see reform that either eliminates software patents, or provides the patent offices the resources to come up with a way to examine software patent applications sufficiently to stop issuing bad software patents.
This is hardly surprising though. The current democratic leadership is full of double-talkers and the republicans are completely owned by special interests.<p>The only way to get something done would be to throw more money at lobbyists than content and pharma. But that is not likely as in Pharma's case the current system is what keeps them in business. Gov't pays for research, pharma picks it up, hides the flaws, markets it to the public then heavily markets against themselves when their patents expire. No sonny, this is regulatory capture at its finest and if you care about software/technology patent reform you have to figure out how to reframe the debate so protected and well funded industries are no longer effected.