[gyardley]

Grousing about oligarchs, special interests, and the political system as a whole is unproductive and misguided. After all, patent reform has already passed with huge bipartisan support in the House of Representatives.

Instead, you should focus on the politician most responsible for blocking patent reform - Harry Reid, and the power he wields as Senate Majority Leader. He might not be up for re-election until 2016, but your donations and votes can help remove him from his position as majority leader in November.

[rayiner]

Complaining about oligarchs and special interests misses the mark, in my opinion. Last month, the following companies launched a group to oppose the proposed reforms: Apple, Microsoft, IBM, DuPont, Pfizer, Ford, and GE: http://partnershipforamericaninnovation.org.

That's a really broad spectrum of iconic American technology companies. These were joined by a number of research universities as well as groups representing small businesses that employ scientists and engineers.

It's easy to take an internet company-centric view of the world and dismiss the whole opposition as "oligarchs and special interests." But think of it from the perspective of a Congressman or Congresswoman. He or she doesn't know that "Twitter is in, while Microsoft is out," so to speak. What they know is that Microsoft is an American company that employs 100,000 people, more than Google, Twitter, Yahoo!, and Facebook combined. From their perspective, the opposition isn't "oligarchs and special interests." They're a broad swath of what they perceive as the relevant stakeholders: American companies and universities engaged in R&D that employ lots of scientists and engineers and create lots of "next-generation STEM jobs."

The whole political machinery of the U.S., on both sides of the aisle, is committed to the technology sector being an engine for job creation going forward. That doesn't just mean the internet sector, but also pharma, biotechnology, automotive, energy, etc. These are the sectors Washington is counting on to replace the jobs Silicon Valley is automating away. When a list of key companies in each of these sectors oppose reforms, and say that they will hamper job creation, then it will be very difficult to convince members of Congress that the reforms are a good thing overall.

The first set of reforms passed because there was broad buy-in from the technology sector as a whole. Any future reforms will require more buy-in from the broader industry than exists right now.

[danielweber]

Microsoft is an American company that employs 100,000 people, more than Google, Twitter, Yahoo!, and Facebook combined.

This is a key point. Whatever arguments you can make about the economic efficiency of IP laws[1], favoring the industry that employs a lot more people isn't "un-democratic." It's democracy, good and hard. [2] Those 100,000 people can easily outvote all the other companies. It's exactly the opposite of favoring the oligarchs, which would be the sharehodlers of GOOG, TWIT, YHOO, FACE.

[1] Those latter companies indeed make more with less workers, which to a first order approximation is what you want to encourage in the long term. It's not the final answer and there are good arguments to make the other way, like GOOG needing other people's IP in order to have something to index and put ads on top of.

[2] As my allusion to Mencken suggests, I really don't like populist arguments. But when defending the populists' jobs becomes "defending the oligarchs" I know I'm in some kind of bizarro world.

[ulfw]

Well it depends on wether 1 company employing 100,000 people is better or 10,000 companies employing 10 each. Of course it's easier to represent the will of 1 vs the not-always-overlapping-voices of 10,000.

[rayiner]

This is a good point, but remember the small business coalition is split. Congress sees some small businesses saying that troll lawsuits hinder their business, while others, particularly in capital-intensive areas like telecoms or medical devices, saying that patents give them protections from larger competitors and provide leverage in getting funding and or being acquired.

[ulfw]

Very much agree. Which goes to my point that 10,000 companies with 10 employees each won't ever be able to speak with one voice/have one agenda or one opinion. Much easier to do with a 100,000 people mega corp ;)

[Shebanator]

So lets see if I have your argument straight: when we do something in Microsoft's interest, it helps their 100,000 employees. But if we do something in Google/Twitter/Yahoo/Facebook's interest, it helps the oligarchs who own their stock. Sure glad Microsoft doesn't have to worry about pleasing any of those pesky oligarch shareholders.

[CurtHagenlocher]

A few more numbers:

IBM: ~400,000 GE: ~300,000 Ford: ~180,000 Apple: ~80,000 Pfizer: ~78,000 DuPont: ~70,000

Additionally, I know that Microsoft almost another 100,000 people employed as "vendors". Furthermore, these are the kinds of stocks that tend to be widely held by e.g. pension funds and 401k programs, so their impact extends well beyond their employees.

Now to be fair, these employee counts are worldwide and not just in the United States -- and the interests of their management are not necessarily aligned with the interests of the employees. But it's important to have some perspective on the scales of things. Historically, Ford has done a lot more to raise the standard of living of the average American than Facebook has.

Disclosure: I work at Microsoft.

[CurtHagenlocher]

And just to head that off, I do think there are elements of the patent system that need to be fixed. The three patents with my name on them are good evidence that -- at least when it comes to software -- the USPTO is granting patents they probably shouldn't be.

I know absolutely nothing about the legislation in question.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Apple, Microsoft, IBM, DuPont, Pfizer, Ford, and GE

DuPont, Pfizer, Ford and GE are in industries that are not plagued by patent trolls. That they're against it tells you nothing about how it would affect them because they don't experience the problem the legislation solves, so it necessarily creates nothing but downside risk for them. No matter how small that risk is, requiring them to put their full support behind it in order to fix somebody else's problem is requiring reform to fail.

But it is also disingenuous to suggest that they are the major force against reform, because the bill is quite well targeted specifically at patent trolls. The downside risk for Pfizer et al is extremely small. They may not support it but it's hardly going to put them out of business if it passes. What it would do is put a huge number of patent trolls out of business (along with the lawyers that represent them), and in so doing save a huge number of jobs at the startups they would have extorted or bankrupted. Which is why everyone is saying that the trial lawyers are the ones that most wanted to kill reform -- because the trial lawyers are the ones that most wanted to kill reform.

[rayiner]

I think you're understating the degree to which the formation of the Partnership for American Innovation, and similar efforts, sucked a lot of the air out of the reform effort. PAI's official position is that they're trying to endorse the fundamental soundness of the existing system, not support or oppose any particular legislation. But c'mon: how else should we interpret an endorsement of the soundness of the existing system right as legislative efforts are underway to change it significantly?

This is the press-release for their formation, posted last month: http://partnershipforamericaninnovation.org/announcement ("To date, the conversation around patents has been dominated by those seeking to curtail America’s strong system for narrow, short-term gains. Companies like those in the PAI support a strong, balanced system and are working together to make sure the conversation is driven by facts, not rhetoric, and reason rather than emotion.")

This is PAI's most recent blog post, from 10 days ago: http://partnershipforamericaninnovation.org/belief-patent-sy.... It's titled, "The belief that our patent system is broken is patently false." It leads with: ("If you listen to some commentators on the subject of patents, you could form the belief that the patent system is irreparably broken. According to these arguments, 'patent trolls' are bringing businesses to a complete halt and that software patents are a barrier to innovation. Some pundits even equate 'patent troll' litigation with the legitimate legal interests of inventors who are defending their intellectual property.")[1]

To me, these read as a pointed rejections of the arguments used by proponents of the Senate bill, timed to have maximum impact on the members of Congress working on the bill. You're right that these companies don't suffer from troll suits and so don't have an investment in getting fully behind reform. But these messages, timed the way they were, did a lot more than simply declare an intention to sit out the debate.

[1] Note that statements like these do not get posted on a joint-blog without extensive scrutiny and sign-off by all the companies involved.

[AnthonyMouse]

I don't see how that's any different than what I wrote. Companies outside of the software industry don't think patent trolls are a problem because their industries aren't beleaguered with patent trolls. They don't have the problem so they don't care about fixing it.

Notice the absence of criticism of the proposed reforms. They're not providing any reasoned critique of the proposed solution or suggesting any alternative way of dealing with patent trolls, they're just denying the existence of the problem because they don't experience it.

[rayiner]

The title of this thread is about who killed the reform effort. You're saying its the trial lawyers. But they've opposed this from the beginning. What card did they pull in the last few weeks they couldn't pull before?

Meanwhile, in the last month, these companies come out and endorse the status quo, and criticize the motivation behind the proposed reforms if not the specific terms. They come out and say, just in the last month, that "we think the current system is fine." Now, everyone opposed to the reform can wave these comments in front of the faces of everyone still on the fence. "See, we told you, the system is fine!" When you're talking about a reform bill, an endorsement of the status quo is almost the same as outright opposition to reform.

If PAI didn't intend to kill the bill, they sure as hell handed the trial lawyers a gift-wrapped present.

[AnthonyMouse]

I'm not saying they like the bill. They have very little incentive to support it and all else equal change is risk. Releasing a statement to that effect doesn't cost them anything. But somebody leaned pretty hard on somebody yesterday to stop something everybody else thought was happening, and I don't think the smart money is on DuPont or Ford being that somebody.

[afarrell]

Pfiser, Microsoft, and IBM all sponsor the startup accelerator MassChallenge. So they all have put some money towards helping grow the startup ecosystem, presumably because it is in their interest somehow...

http://masschallenge.org/about/sponsors

[Joeri]

Those companies are not voters. If the voters say A and all the PR departments of all companies say B then in a democracy A should happen, not B.

[scotch_drinker]

It's not a zero sum game. You can both grouse about those things AND contribute at the grassroots or whatever level you choose. It's entirely consistent to express dismay at the system as a whole in response to an article like this and do things to actual effect change.

If we only took action and never groused publicly, man, HN would be a boring place.

[gyardley]

Like I said, patent reform has already passed with huge bipartisan support in the House of Representatives.

It's clear here that the problems aren't with 'American democracy' (or any other incredibly-broad and incredibly-hard-to-change system) but with a few ever-so-ejectable politicians. We can agree to disagree, but I believe that blaming the problem on structural issues encourages apathy and helplessness in a way that focusing on Reid does not.

[rosser]

And focusing on Reid lets the actual bad actors continue to get away with it. Reid is a symptom. Or do you honestly think that if Reid is voted out or loses his leadership post for this kind of behavior, the next guy won't step up, hands out in supplication to the very same special interests?

[AnimalMuppet]

If doing so costs Reid the next election, then his successor may well not obey those special interests.

[rosser]

...and said successor would find himself un-funded, and thus unable to run in the next election cycle. Being a congresscritter is expensive, and the state doesn't pay for it. That means incumbent or prospective legislators have to appeal to the very special interests to whom they're subsequently beholden to get the job in the first place. If you demonstrate that you're unwilling to do what they want, you won't get the money you need.

[Fando]

Agreed.

[rosser]

Because this is totally Reid's fault. Yeah, he's one of the tooliest tools that ever tooled, but blaming him for the structural problems in the American political system is myopic, at best.

[gyardley]

Yes, this is exactly the problem I'm talking about. The barrier to patent reform is not structural. It has a name and face, and when you handwave it away to 'structural problems' you just encourage everyone to do nothing.

[Joeri]

The problem is structural though. Replace the first past the post voting rules with a system that allows for coalition government, and you will magically see the diminishment of special interest influence across the board.

[afarrell]

You are trying to shave a yak, but political yaks are much harder to shave than devops ones.

[freehunter]

But that can't be done without the right people in office, and the first step towards getting the right people in office is to identify who the wrong people in office are.

[rosser]

It's a much smaller, and probably far easier to identify set to enumerate the "right" ones currently in office. I'm pretty sure that set could be counted on the fingers of one hand, across both houses.