EFF: A Terrible Patent Bill is On the Way
A Terrible Patent Bill is On the Way Recently, we reported on the problems with a proposal from Senators Coons and Tillis to rewrite Section 101 of the Patent Act. Now, those senators have released a draft bill of changes they want to make. It’s not any better. Section 101 prevents monopolies on basic research tools that nobody could have invented. That protects developers, start-ups, and makers of all kinds, especially in software-based fields. The proposal by Tillis and Coons will seriously weaken Section 101, leaving makers vulnerable to patent trolls, and other abusers of the patent system. The draft legislation does remove a few aspects of the earlier proposal, but it has the exact same effect: it will erase more than a century of Section 101 case law—including the recent decision in Alice v. CLS Bank —and take away courts’ power to restore them. The new draft bill relabels the existing law (subsection (a) below) and tacks a new subsection (b) after it. The new part i...