Patent Reform Crucial to Technology Competition, Says Google’s Walker
ASPEN, Colo. -- The U.S. government needs to focus on narrow reforms to the patent system to encourage and enhance the “magic of technology,” said Kent Walker, Google senior vice president-general counsel, Tuesday at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum. He urged policymakers to refocus the patent system around software patents and urged the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to scrutinize patents more carefully before granting them.
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"It is clear that the federal bench is expressing concern about how the system is working for software patents,” Walker said. “That can’t help but mobilize the energy for change. Our hope in the next weeks and months to come is to start to work with others to agree on a narrow focus agenda for reform that solves a narrow problem with a narrow set of solutions.” The PTO should “raise the bar” and work harder to prevent issuing bad patents, he said. The office should have better descriptions of software patents, clearer claims and ensure what gets patents makes a real contribution, he said.
Congress should make an effort to create new tools that weed out bad software patents, said Walker. Lawmakers should extend some provisions of the America Invents Act by challenging financial business method patents to include all sovereign patents, he said. Though the act had some positive aspects, Walker said it “didn’t address some of the issues we are seeing today. We are seeing a really challenging situation in software right now. The smartphone wars are the most tangible evidence of that.”
The government should keep an eye on the “growing anticompetitive abuse of patents, Walker said. “Government plays a critical role in setting and enforcing the clear rules of the road and in making policy we should work together to focus on people,” he said. “We want to make sure that technology policy accepts and even embraces the unexpected. No one wants to wrap the future in yellow caution tape.”