Masnick, again

IPBiz just noticed an interesting comment by Mike Masnick, the guy who gets more mileage out of nothing than Jerry Seinfeld.

In context, one commenter to TechDirt wrote:

Jaffe, Lemley and Lerner are shills for Microsoft, et al...

As below, Mr. Lemley is paid by those pushing patent "deform" and therefore biased ...

© 2007 Mark A. Lemley & Carl Shapiro. We are grateful to Apple Computer, Cisco
Systems, Intel, Micron Technology, Microsoft, and SAP for funding the research reported in this Article. We emphasize that our conclusions are our own, not theirs.

http://271patent.blogspot.com/2008/08/patent-reform-crawling-back-in-2008.html
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/02/more-on-lemley-and-intellectual.html

Masnick the vapid responded:

As below, Mr. Lemley is paid by those pushing patent "deform" and therefore biased ...


Hahahahhaha. Yes, that explains why Lemley just came out with an entire book against the patent reform bill in Congress.

Credibility? You ain't gone any.

In the meantime, you talk about Lemley being a shill and then you point to IPBiz?!? HA!

If Masnick has any facts to support the idea that IPBiz is a shill for anybody or anything, let him post below.

Otherwise, the above Masnick-ism should be deemed another vacuous outpouring from Mr. Running-on-empty.

As to Masnick, see also

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/04/mike-masnick-emperor-with-no-clothes.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-it-real-or-is-it-masnick.html

As to Lemley's book

A blurb at UChicagoPress describes the book as follows:

Patent law is crucial to encourage technological innovation. But as the patent system currently stands, diverse industries from pharmaceuticals to software to semiconductors are all governed by the same rules even though they innovate very differently. The result is a crisis in the patent system, where patents calibrated to the needs of prescription drugs wreak havoc on information technologies and vice versa. According to Dan L. Burk and Mark A. Lemley in The Patent Crisis and How the Courts Can Solve It, courts should use the tools the patent system already gives them to treat patents in different industries differently. Industry tailoring is the only way to provide an appropriate level of incentive for each industry.

The abbreviated text on SSRN about Lemley's book (where's that guy from Georgia Tech?) states the following:

We hope, in short, to convince the reader of three things: (1) that a purely unitary
patent system no longer fits the extraordinarily diverse needs of innovators in today’s
technology industries; (2) that the solution is not to split the patent system into industry-
specific protection statutes, but to tailor the unitary patent rules on a case-by-case basis to
the needs of different industries; and (3) that it is the courts, not Congress or the PTO,
that are best positioned to do this tailoring.

Masnick's description -- Lemley just came out with an entire book against the patent reform bill in Congress --
seems a bit different than Lemley's!

Also

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/04/businessweek-pushes-lemley-book-on.html

**Separately, to IAM-->

Of -- t seems to me that there is a lot more the corporate world could be doing to ensure that examiners at the USPTO and other offices are able to do their jobs as effectively as possible, -- one recalls that the theme of applicants doing more work was frequently expressed by former Director Dudas in the context of the proposed rules changes. One recalls that many folks in the IT industry were complaining about low quality patents and continuation application abuse, even though they themselves arguably were the biggest abusers. Of continuations, note:

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/dapp/opla/comments/fpp_continuation/ebert2.pdf

Professor Lemley, who crafted the "Ending Abuse..." paper relied upon by the USPTO, received funding from folks in the IT industry for the paper 85 Tex. L. Rev. 1991 (2007):

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/04/chameleon-like-nature-of-positions-of.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/04/industry-contracting-with-academics-to.html

Note also:

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/06/harold-wegner-takes-walk-on-dark-side.html

Of -- taking a step back and making a well-thought out decision that proceeding in the face of killer art or some other issue is not likely going to secure something of more than fleeting value --
recall the quote including --patent the damned thing anyway-- within the Wall Street Journal after the Unocal patent got traction.

[http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/01/tim-lee-on-menell-on-patent-lawyers.html ]