WASHINGTON politicians might have stepped in to save patent troll companies who have been targeted by a civil rights watchdog.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation patent busting project has been challenging patents which it thinks should never have been granted.

However the Patent Reform Act of 2007 contains a clause that will prevent watchdogs like the EFF challenging patent applications if they have been on the books for longer than a year.

This means that the EFF, which generally supports patent law reform, is tiggered from enforcing anything.

According to the EFF's bog the organisation basically said that the law as it is drafted will protect those who make frivolous patents from the EFF and similar watchdogs.

One of the EFF's successes was to get the US Patent and Trademark Office to revoke a patent held by Clear Channel that covered a system for recording and distributing live music. Another was the distance-learning site Test.com that lost its patent after the EFF challenged all 16 claims upon which its patent rested.

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