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Comment by vibrunazo | Hacker News Reader

Why isn't there a bill circulating in the house or congress for patent reform yet? It's reasonably common in my country for companies to sponsor bills. Company having problems with legislation -> pays lawyers to write a bill -> lobby a few congressman to put bill to vote -> bill gets voted -> if no one opposes it, company gets its new law approved.

Is it too different in the US? Why hasn't Google done this yet? They're sure under a lot of pressure, have a lot of interest in patent reform and have enough lawyers to write a great bill. Just getting something like this to get voted, so it would show up on media, that would be huge. The MAFIAA is doing it to defend their interests. Why isn't Google doing the same to defend theirs?

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There are many powerful interests on the other side of the issue. For example, pharmaceutical companies have very different desires for the patent system than Google would.

I can think of a bazillion of more problems like that. I can also think of a bazillion solutions (ex: reform only for software). An initial draft doesn't need to be perfect. But it would be great to get the conversation started. I'm not optimistic that a patent reform bill would be approved anytime soon, nor in it's first few attempts. But we have to start somewhere, right?

A proposed bill to ban software patent would be great, but maybe Google, Apple and co. actually "like" the status quo ? It's a kind a dissuasion weapon that only huge companies can get, so even if they don't like to fight with each other, at least they prevent new competition to arise

Because they've just passed something they called "patent reform", which barely changed anything. Now they think that they don't need to address the issue anymore for the next decade or so.

The patent reform law included restructuring of joinder rules, which will prevent patent trolls from casting a huge net over tens or hundreds of companies (like Lodsys did) and dragging them all out to Texas in a single suit. Instead, trolls like Lodsys will have to sue each target one- by- one, at much greater expense, and in each suit will have to make a case for venue; many patent lawsuits will probably now occur in venues favorable to the defendant (if only for logistical reasons).

The patent reform bill didn't fix everything, or even most of the problems, but it's not accurate to say it "barely changed anything".

Among other things, it doesn't matter how much Google wants to spend on patent reform. Apple can spend double or triple if it comes to that (not to mention other interests inside and outside the tech industry).

If you knew you were hopelessly outgunned, would you start that fight? Or would you lay low and hope that gridlock means that at least things don't get worse?

Not to mention Google just spent billions buying patents, investors might think it wasteful if then Google goes to push for abolishing software patents, even if it would still be a good business decision (those billions were never really an investment but a form of "insurance", if patents are abolished that insurance is not needed anymore).

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