What kind of of inane statement is that? The system needs to be made weaker as illustrated by the patent trolls. Does he think patents need to be made stronger?
Ironically, he's one of those engineers that Reddit/HN say that there aren't enough of in Congress:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Massie ("Thomas Massie was born in Huntington, West Virginia. He grew up in Vanceburg, Kentucky and met his future wife, Rhonda. He earned a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and a Master's degree in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1993, at MIT, he and his wife started a successful company, called SensAble Devices Inc. Massie was the winner in 1995 of the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for inventors. The company was re-incorporated as SensAble Technologies, Inc. in 1996 after partner Bill Aulet joined the company. They raised $32 million of venture capital, had 24 different patents, and 70 other employees. After Massie sold the company, he and his wife moved back to their hometown in Lewis County. They raised their children on a farm, where he built his own off-the-grid timberframe house.").
I know a couple of founder-engineers who would probably share Massie's view. The patent system has lots of problems, but it does allow for something very valuable: arms-length transactions in the products of R&D efforts.
Notice he didn't specify whether or not it weakens strong patents, but the patent system. A good thought experiment would be to ask yourself if you think the patent system needs to be made stronger. If you don't think it needs to be made stronger then would it still work if made weaker? If neither is true, you are close to saying the system is perfect the way it is.
Undoubtedly some proponents of the bill see it as a first step towards weakening patents generally, but that's not how it's being billed.
If you prefer to think of it in terms of loopholes, I would point out that loopholes in a system of restrictions act to increase the powers enabled by that system. To close those loopholes is to decrease the power that the system is capable of imparting.
All of that is to say that taking steps to make it harder for non-practicing entities to abuse the system in a way that has a net detriment on technology and innovation is the very act of closing the areas of copyright law that empower non-practicing entities to the detriment of practicing entities. Ideally such a change would decrease the power of the patent system just enough to shut out those who have a negative net impact on the advancement of technology and innovation.
I'm not sure what your first sentence actually means, but there is not enough evidence to support the following sentence. I know it's a popular opinion around here, but really, it's because this place is an echo chamber when it comes to certain topics.
There are studies that show how NPEs have beneficial effects (see work by Michael Risch, Jay Kesan, Anne Layne-Farrar etc.), and others showing their harmful effects are not as bad as media makes it look. The GAO report on NPEs, for instance, found that they are no big problem, really.
Unfortunately, the data available is limited in a big way: there is no data at all on demand letters that trolls like Lodsys send. There's an act that would help track these things too (http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2013/11/patent-reform-2013-d...), and that's the one I'm really looking forward to. That data would give a much clearer picture of the NPE situation.
Or would the threat of selling the patent give me enough leverage for a settlement? I hate the idea of having to rely on another large corporation to be my champion, as it were.