Taxes due and so is Patent Reform

For those of you who haven't heard or somehow forgot, there's an important Patent Reform Conference being held at Berkeley on April 15-16th.   As you may recall, last fall the FTC came out with a report that made a slew of interesting suggestions for fixing the problem of patent quality and resulting anti-innovative and anticompetitive activities.  (See below at Oct. 29, 2003).   The National Academy of Sciences has also made recommendations, which I cannot comment upon because I haven't read them yet.   But you can bet I will!  You can find the FTC report and the NAS paper on the Conference site.  At the Reform conference, judges, lawyers, professors, economists and representatives of the companies affected by defects in the patent system and potentially affected by the proposed reforms will get together to discuss the recommendations.   This looks both thought-provoking and practical.