CCIA Hosts Panel, Releases Report on Patent Crisis and Reform

File Under: 2006, Copyright

Nov 1, 2006

Washington, D.C. – Today the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) hosted a briefing seminar on Capitol Hill and released a new report on the current patent crisis and how to reform the system.

CCIA Senior Fellow Brian Kahin prepared the report, Patent Policy for a Digital Economy. Kahin was formerly Director of the Harvard Information Infrastructure Project and Senior Policy Analyst at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The report examines the difficulties that the IT sector is experiencing with the patent system and makes a number of concrete recommendations for fundamental patent reform.

“Patent reform has been paralyzed by deep divisions in perspective between pharmaceutical interests and IT,” said Kahin, “but in reality the reforms o­n the table are targeted at symptoms rather than underlying structural problems. The system is broken, because it is currently subsidizing pharmaceuticals at the expense of IT, especially software.” Among other things, the report advocates raising the threshold standard of patentability so that it is no longer judged by the person of “ordinary” skill, a standard ill-suited to today’s innovation-driven economy.


The panel, entitled “Patents – What Went Wrong, What’s Next” in the House Rayburn Building included several patent experts: economist Jim Bessen, John Duffy, Professor at George Washington University, and Mark Webbink, Deputy General Counsel for Red Hat. Webbink described the practical problems faced by software companies in dealing with hundreds of thousands of software patents. Bessen presented research results showing how litigation has led to patents exacting a tax o­n innovation. Professor Duffy criticized an overly centralized specialized appeals process, noting that many of the problems discussed were the result of the Federal Circuit’s near monopoly o­n patent jurisprudence.

The Report can viewed here.
The Executive Summary can viewed here.
And the Agenda can viewed here