Google, Cisco Lose Bid To Push For Court-Based Patent Reform
from the so-much-for-that-plan dept
Google and Cisco apparently filed a joint amicus brief on a case about a patent involving the uniform thickness of a drive shaft wall. It may seem odd, but the point was that the two companies wanted to stop the practice of Appeals Courts overturning lower court rulings on the validity of patents, suggesting that this just gives incentive for companies to keep appealing. The Supreme Court, however, has turned down the request to hear the case, which makes some sense. Why should anyone lose their right to appeal a decision? This is ignoring the real root cause of the problem — which is that there’s no effective way to contest the validity of a patent. If that were provided, this legal problem wouldn’t be much of an issue.
