Patent Reform

An update on patent reform leg­is­la­tion work­ing its way through Congress right now. An inter­est­ing amend­ment (from the com­ments on Patently-​​O) includes the following:

[The] ban­ning of patents on “tax plan­ning meth­ods.” These are defined, inter alia, as any inven­tion that is a “technique…that has, when imple­mented, the effect of reduc­ing, min­i­miz­ing, or defer­ring, a taxpayer’s tax lia­bil­ity” with the excep­tion of tax prepa­ra­tion software.

Patent reform has the poten­tial to be a really big deal, if it goes through. For more infor­ma­tion, see, for exam­ple, Proposals for patent reform rais­ing fears from the Chicago Tribune.