Schumer to put his imprint on patent reform, immigration matters?

Related to the announced departure of Harry Reid, TheHill has a story Schumer’s rise could boost tech industry which includes

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In particular, Schumer has been one of the Senate’s biggest supporters of broad reforms to the nation’s patent laws.

(...)

Schumer was also a vocal backer of immigration reform, which tech companies say is critical to supply them with a vibrant workforce.

(...)

Unlike Schumer, Durbin has been much more skeptical of broad patent reform measures, which he has said could limit scientists and inventors to break new bold ground.


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**As to Schumer's position in 2014, note the fee-shifting provision in the Cornyn-Schumer compromise bill of 2014 was less extreme than that of the Goodlatte Innovation bill:

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Fee shifting: The draft language, rather than making fee-shifting presumptive, would simply lower the current burden from “exceptional case” to “objectively unreasonable.” The prevailing party would have to move the court to award fees at the end of the case and prove that the conduct or positions of the losing party were not objectively reasonable. The court would also have discretion to deny such a motion under “special circumstances” even if the conduct/positions were not objectively reasonable. This is probably the most significant and positive change in the draft compromise, as it avoids the many problems associated with presumptively awarding fees to the winning party. Cornyn and Schumer nicely capture this balanced spirit in their introductory “Sense of Congress” language, where they proclaim their intention to “strike a more appropriate balance between protecting the right of a patent holder to enforce his patent, including through litigation, on the one hand, and deterring abusive patent litigation and abusive threats thereof on the other -

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from http://www.techpolicydaily.com/technology/cornyn-schumer-patent-reform-compromise-significant-improvement/

**As to immigration reform and H1B visas, IPBiz

--> had discussed IBM's controversial patent application on outsourcing which came out right at the time of a major IBM layoff in Schumer's state of New York:

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IAM on IBM's Kappos, not touching the political or patent pulse?
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/04/iam-on-ibms-kappos-not-touching.html

including text:

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IAM made no mention of the IBM meltdown surrounding published US application 20090083107, titled METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR STRATEGIC GLOBAL RESOURCE SOURCING, which is a business method patent about outsourcing nor mention of the flap over IBM's recent termination of numerous US workers. A NBC Nightly News story on 3 April 09 discussed how an IBM Fishkill employee [Frederic (Rick) Clark] was offered the opportunity to keep his job, in India at the prevailing salary in India [20 to 25% of US].

On the layoffs themselves, from the Times Herald-Record online:

IBM fired some 5,000 U.S. workers Thursday [26 March 09] — including employees at IBM Sterling Forest in Tuxedo and IBM Poughkeepsie.

One by one, thousands of IBM workers entered managers' offices with a sense of dread to learn if they'd get the ax.

At Sterling Forest, which had been spared from a wave of firings earlier this year, an employee described the mood as grim and the building whisper quiet.

Big Blue is shifting work to India, where labor and production costs are significantly lower.

Thus, the "timing" of the patent application was incredibly poor, apart from the lack of quality in this business method application, all problems which have to placed at Kappos' door.

While Joff Wild was writing on 3 April 09 that IBM's concerns about patent quality have Kappos's fingerprints all over them, Joff neglected to mention the story by Christine Young titled IBM drops patent application for outsourcing offshore jobs


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See also

What's in your skill set in this knowledge economy?
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2010/10/whats-in-your-skill-set-in-this.html



http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/08/who-is-rick-clark.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/08/is-bazaar-economy-based-on-innovative.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/08/ibms-us-7571105-issues-of-patent.html


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-->and IPBiz had previously written about statements by former Congressman Michael Grimm (of New York), who had suggested American workers were turning down $150,000 per year jobs (below).



As a "set-up" to the Grimm statement, from an ABC News story, which suggests $150K is a problematic salary for American employers:

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“The No. 1 issue in the tech world is as people get older, they generally become more expensive,” said Vivek Wadhwa, an adviser to start-ups and an entrepreneurship scholar affiliated with Duke University. “So if you’re an employer who can hire a worker fresh out of college who is making $60,000 versus an older worker whose making $150,000, and the younger worker has skills that are fresher, who would you hire?”

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Are Americans Losing High-Skilled Jobs to Foreigners?

But Grimm actually suggested American workers were turning down $150K per year jobs because they could make more.

Previous IPBiz posts

Chasing purple squirrels


The comment about Grimm was posted on Thursday, June 07, 2012, which includes a link to the audio of Grimm's remarks:

Startup Act 2.0: are you turning up your nose at $150K/year jobs?
http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2012/06/startup-act-20-are-you-turning-up-your.html, including the text:

--Of a separate matter, related to a case brought before the Department of Labor:

In that particular case, a large U.S. corporation had terminated 50% of its scientists in its basic research laboratory, but denied several of them the opportunity to compete with a foreign worker for a single position in one of its applied laboratories.
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