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Senate inches ahead on patent law overhaul |
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Written by Felix Da Silva (fdasilva@bitnip.com)
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Thursday, 21 June 2007 |
 U.S. Senate panel has taken a tiny new step toward overhauling the patent
system in a manner endorsed by high-tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon.com
and Oracle.
In the blog post written by Anne Broache, it said that by unanimous consent, the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday adopted an
amendment that proposes slight modifications to a sweeping
patent reform measure but leaves intact the thorniest components of the
bill.
Many Silicon Valley companies have applauded the bill because it proposes making a number of changes they consider favorable. Chief among them is restructuring the way that damages are awarded in patent suits so that they are based only on the patent's "specific contribution over the prior art"--that is, the extent to which the patent at issue improves on previous inventions.
Tech companies favor that approach because their products often contain thousands of patented items. They view current law as encouraging disproportionately high damage awards and out-of-court settlements, particularly with so-called "trolls" that exist solely to assert patents against deep-pocketed companies.
Click here to read the full blog post
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