I was surprised to see this ad in the paper recently:
The text reads:
Patent trolls use bad patents to bully companies of all sizes, draining the economy of $80 billion every year. Trolls threaten businesses like supermarkets, restaurants, retailers, and startups with lawsuits, forcing them to go to court or write a check -- money they can't spend on hiring and growth.
Only Congress has the power to stop bad patents and stop the trolls. Got to StopBadPatents.com and tell them to take action now, so we can all get back to business.
I'm a bit suspicious of their use of the phrase bad patents. This implies there are good patents, which there may be, but when someone uses the word bad so freely, it makes me suspect they're oversimplifying.
Loyal Boing Boing reader that I am, I dislike patent trolls as much as the next person, but I was surprised to see who cosponsored the ad:
The "other NRA" and the National Retail Federation -- the associations who are always fighting any increase in the minimum wage. Hmmm.
Allying with people like the Electronic Freedom Foundation. Strange bedfellows.
1 comment:
I thought at first glance that I was looking at one of the infographics that seem to be everywhere online and whose sources are often questionable. These are odd bedfellows, or conference-tablefellows, indeed.
Post a Comment