Two ideas for patent reform

Patently-O talks about two ideas on patent reform — one serious, one not.

The silly one is that Halliburton seems to be trying to patent how to be a patent troll. Halliburton didn’t want to talk about the application. Given stricter rules on business model patents, this seems to be a nonstarter.

The serious one is that telecom entrepreneur (and former UCSD professor) Ron Katznelson is doing a road show for his patent reform ideas. I interviewed Katznelson for my planned SD telecom book, because he worked at Linkabit, worked on DBS standardization with General Instruments, and then started a company MCSI (later Broadband Innovations).

Ron’s recent talk at the UC Davis Law School was written up Monday at Patently-O, complete with slides. His two main concerns are addressing the huge number of pending patents, and also the declining quality.