If you are one of the foolish people out there under the impression that the U.S. banking and real estate crash has led to the current economic state, heightened unemployment, etc, you would be wrong. Turns out, the 18 month publication of patent applications, and 35 USC  § 102(e) have ruined the U.S economy….who knew?

On July 29, 2010 H.R. 5980 was introduced by Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) as the “Bring Jobs Back to America: Strategic Manufacturing & Job Repatriation Act.” How can anyone vote against that noble cause!?

Unfortunately, once past the flowery title, the substance of the bill, at least with respect to the proposed patent law changes is simply a collection of oddball provisions that would neither achieve any meaningful reform nor job repatriation.

The bill proposes three changes to the patent law: abolishing the 18-month publication of patent applications, to be replaced with 18-month publication of abstracts; prioritization of applications by, or affiliated with (affiliated patent holding companies, whatever that means), U.S. universities; and virtual elimination of 102(e) prior art.

The thought process seems to be that by reducing available prior art, and keeping pending applications secret, the U.S economy will improve..somehow; not quite sure how the University angle fits in to job repatriation or manufacturing. Evidently prospering patent holding companies affiliated with universities hire a lot.

I can see large patent holders like Microsoft, Intel and others signing on to support this in droves…less prior art, more power to patent holding companies. Right

Congress….you’re not helping.