Re: More dots
You see what the end goal is here. The POWERS THAT BE want to completely undermine the US Patent system simply because the BIG guys are much too lazy or cheap (or a combination of both) to invest the time and money to stay on the cutting edge of technology. Why spend money for it when you can simply poach it with a little help from your friends in the guvamint?
Political stripes do NOT matter in the least. The powerful protect the powerful regardless of political affiliation. My Democratic Congressmen could give a rat's ass about the goings-on at the FTC or any other federal agency that was being used for the benefit of any given corporate entity. So while ODR's pleadings to Sen. McConnell sound hopeful, most likely McConnell's staffers will advise him not to take this on when they realize the extent of the influence and power on the other side of the fight. Hey, I would LOVE to be proven wrong on this but I do not see it happening.
BIG BIZ will continue to lobby Congress to get some new legislation that achieves its aims of weakening the right of U.S. patent holders. Of course the bill will be structured in such a way that it will only apply to the little guys of the world. No weakening of the patent rights of BIG BIZ will be affected. IBM has many thousands of patents and uses them to intimidate smaller competitors all the time. Micron and Microsoft do the same.
Whatever convoluted piece of garbage comes out of Congress to water down patent holder rights, most likely it will eventually be determined that it violates current US Patent laws. Hence, the bill will be overturned but only after many more years of litigation and appeals. By that time, the BIG BIZ interests will have stolen everything they need to remain fat, dumb, and very happy.
Why the Rambus BOD does not lobby like hell against these types of bills in Congress is extremely frustrating. I hope someone can stand up at the next shareholders' meeting and ask management directly what it is doing to ward off these threats in DC.
UD