President Obama Says Patent Reform Needs to Go Farther

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So, I come up with an idea for an invention, draw up a schematic, but do not manufacture the product. That is the basic underpinning of a patent.

A company can come along and say that as I do not manufacture the product, I cannot claim the patent.

I own the idea, but as I created it, should I not be financially rewarded if a company decides to use my patent?

Obama’s friends/donors at GE and the like must be pushing him to wreck the patent system for big business.

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Obama didn’t really address the problem in his discussion – the inherant problem with most software and business method patents, and the perverse economics of patent troll litigation. Oh and of course submarine patents.

In the administration’s brief on CLS v. Alice, they appeared to take a pretty reasonable tack, but included a provision that would effectively gut a district court judge’s ability to deconstruct patent claims where it is clear that an abstract idea is being dressed up as something patentable via “the draftsman’s art.”

So basically it appears to me they are providing themselves cover, which many are unable or unwilling to see through (you know, people who don’t like software patents but fawn over him because he knows how to use a smart phone and uses facebook in his political campaigns), and then enabling things to go on as they were before – where you have to spend at least $2M to defeat an abstract idea that’s been dressed up as something patentable by an attorney.

We are working on some additional way’s to insure against some risk . But there is only so much insurance can do. What happens in CLS v Alice, and also the tack any new Judges to the appeals court take, are going to be pretty critical.