Help Fight Patent Trolls – Support the SHIELD Act

The "Non-Practicing Entities must post a bond" section (section (b)) is the one I was most happy to see.<p>It means that at least the first levels of "Have a corporate shell that dissolves upon an adverse finding" tricks will be defused.

I feel the law should do more than require the patent troll to pay the other side's legal fees. Perhaps extra damages should be awarded to patent troll victims. Lawsuits take a tremendous amount of time to defend oneself against. You should be personally compensated for the time spent defending yourself when a troll needlessly drags you to court.

It's nice to see. But SHIELD lacks a critical element: allowing the defendant to specify the jurisdiction. Otherwise every patent case will still be fought in troll-friendly East Texas.

It's a good bill, but why does every new law need a cutesy acronym for a name? How about calling it the "Patent Litigation Reform Act of 2013"? Or something else similarly utilitarian?

Hrm. I hesitate to write this; I don't anticipate the following will be well-received. Call me a cynic if you will.<p>"Everyone knows" big business (i.e., folks with an interest in patent law) "controls" the government, right? Or at least has disproportionate ability to persuade? (I'm not trying to make a political statement here - quite the opposite, I'm trying to phrase this in a way everyone can agree on.)<p>Anyhoo, suffice it to say whether Congressman X votes yea or nay here depends more on the phone call he's about to get from the CEO of General Electric than how many copies of EFF's form letter land in his inbox. So...what are we doing here? By 'we' I don't mean you, dear reader. It wouldn't be the first time netizens took to a rallying cry just for the sake of rallying and crying. What is EFF doing? They're smart guys. They know their way up and down K Street. They know what gets a bill passed and what doesn't, and they know 10,000 form emails falls under the latter category. What's their game?<p>Fundraiser. Note the big, blue "DONATE NOW." Oh - and by 'fundraiser' I mean income, livelihood, payroll checks, bacon-to-be-brought-home. Their business is your excitability, and cousin, business is a-boomin'.

I have just one question: where to sign against the SHIELD?<p>If you are judging on something you are to consider both options. And it is not about software/hardware producers and p-trolls. The law is to protect <i>authors</i>. In some way the law is to embrace innovation and progress (despite it is not the main value).<p>Producers want do use the law to create monopoly. To eliminate minor innovators and use they innovations for free. What about scientists? What about research groups? Does they innovations "practical"? Mostly not, but still these people might understand the direction of technology and take actions that are two steps ahead of producers. Our society is called "postindustrial" not because the great development of IT but of lack of development "industrial" things. Progress became extensive and not moving forward. Science became servant of production, faith by itself. Science loosing criticism -- the approach that leads to better models of the world.<p>Author of innovation is nobody, a pawn in the hands of mighty producers, and we, the <i>consumers</i> is to worship <i>great producers</i>, ought to sacrifice all this minor and unworthy author. Who even dares to remember the authors?<p>Also, consider rights of "real" innovation authors -- in-company engineers. Are they any protected? Do they really have author right's at some moment? They are the authors! Many of them are quite unique in special areas. Did they have a voice?<p>SHIELD act protect producers to create monopolies. It is uncertain that the act will decrease possibilities of <i>pure trolls</i>. The origin of author's rights is not about the areas where it is applied now, current approach is outdated. But even complete rejection of author's rights is better than the SHIELD law.

This seems like it isn't a totally perfect solution either, though. I would expect that smaller companies or startups would be more hesitant to try to file a legitimate claim now, especially against someone like Apple or Google, because if they end up losing (because sometimes the other guys just have a bigger and better legal team) then it may financially ruin the small company.

I fail to see how this fixes the problem.<p>How does a small company or individual who doesn't have the millions to defend herself win in the first place?<p>The way I understand it right now, this basically only removes the risk from medium sized companies that have the financial backing but only settle to save littigation money.

I can't help but feel that this is battling symptoms, not the real problem.<p>A frivolous lawsuit is a frivolous lawsuit, no matter who brings it. The real problem is that patents give far too much power (injunctions of products heavily invested in), defending costs far too much money, and it is far too easy to get patents on relatively simple things.<p>This has to be balanced by either:<p>* Making far fewer inventions patentable (only inventions that take a real investment of time and money should be patentable)<p>OR<p>* Drastically reducing the power of patents (no injunctions unless in rare cases, much cheaper process for patent infringement fights)<p>Preferably, both.

&#60;3 Peter DeFazio