Critical vote for US patent law due

SOME OF the worst excesses of US Patent law stand to be curtailed if a US Congressional subcommittee decides to back a new patent reform law later this week.

The IT and telecoms industries suffer in particular from the grey area which surrounds patent claims. Good examples here are RIM versus NTP and Qualcomm versus Nokia.

The chief problem is that many damages awards bear little relation to the actual worth of the patent compared to all of the other elements which make up the total end product.

The danger is that if the Congressional subcommittee doesn't make a decision soon, the potential law will go onto the backburner after July 4th elections.

One of the chief problems is a clash of cultures. Many US companies deliberately create their IPR so that they can get paid by a manufacturer who decides to skip the R&D bit and go directly to the end product stage.

by contrast, in Europe, once a manufacturer has establish that there is a good and healthy market for a particular product, the company decides it would be a jolly good idea to protect all of its hard work with a patent.

Hopefully a new law would stave off the US/Europe divide whereby some leading manufacturers simply can't be bothered to market their products in the States because the legal fees are too unpredictable. µ