Oblivious Supreme Court poised to legalize medical patents • Hacker News Board

Re: Oblivious Supreme Court poised to legalize medical patents

#31

Post by drewcrawford » Thu, Dec 08, 2011, 1:41 AM UTC

leot wrote: post #30

_delirium wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main source of dislike is that the lawyers appear to be the only ones profiting: they receive substantial payouts, the lead plaintiffs they talk to receive payments, but the bulk of the class they supposedly represent receives worthless coupons. The suspicion is that they're negotiating primarily for themselves, willing to sell out the class with a shitty settlement, as long as they themselves get a good…

Sounds like a problem of the selection of legal representation. It seems there needs to be some, ah, website that helps to put together groups of plaintiffs and organizes the process of selecting a good legal team to represent them ... ... if the website got 0.25% of every settlement, it could be pretty lucrative.

As I understand it (IANAL) the vast majority of members of the class find out during the settlement process, i.e. well AFTER the lawyers have been picked.

You can technically "opt out" and go sue the company yourself, but you're not going to get people who realistically, upon receiving notice that they are getting an unexpected settlement in-between two utility bills, decide to form their own class.

Re: Oblivious Supreme Court poised to legalize medical patents

#32

Post by leot » Thu, Dec 08, 2011, 1:45 AM UTC

drewcrawford wrote: post #31

leot wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a problem of the selection of legal representation. It seems there needs to be some, ah, website that helps to put together groups of plaintiffs and organizes the process of selecting a good legal team to represent them ... ... if the website got 0.25% of every settlement, it could be pretty lucrative.

As I understand it (IANAL) the vast majority of members of the class find out during the settlement process, i.e. well AFTER the lawyers have been picked. You can technically "opt out" and go sue the company yourself, but you're not going to get people who realistically, upon receiving notice that they are getting an unexpected settlement in-between two utility bills, decide to form their own class.

Right. The point would to allow this kind of thing to happen more organically. Those with a grievance would aggregate before the legal team was chosen.

Re: Oblivious Supreme Court poised to legalize medical patents

#33

Post by AngryParsley » Thu, Dec 08, 2011, 1:47 AM UTC

leot wrote: post #19

wtn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be interested to hear about the Ticketmaster class action settlement I learned I was a party to in my email this morning. Lawyers get $16 million, members of the class get coupons on future Ticketmaster purchases.

It's amazing that so many entrepreneurs seem to hate the large payments that class action lawyers are awarded. Class action lawyers perform the same kind of high-risk high-reward gamble that startups engage in. While tech startups create value by making something useful, these lawyers create value by keeping powerful interests honest. The idea that they are unnecessary or should be capped because consumers will just…

The big difference is that successful class-action lawyers transfer wealth, while successful entrepreneurs create wealth.

Re: Oblivious Supreme Court poised to legalize medical patents

#34

Post by rayiner » Thu, Dec 08, 2011, 2:26 AM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #27

jm4 wrote: post #25

The Supreme Court does not "legalize" anything. They interpret existing laws and decide on their legality. They can't shoot it down just because it sucks. Their decision is based on whether or not the law runs afoul of the Constitution. Don't like the law? Blame the a-holes who wrote it. Better yet, try to get it changed.

It's very... sanguine of you to think the Supreme Court is full of bloodless rationalists, computers that read statutes and, via sheer force of deductive reasoning, come to a conclusion. In reality, the Supreme Court is supremely political, and they regularly do shoot down a law because they think it sucks or approve a law because shooting it down would make people angry.

The situation is quite a bit more nuanced than that. The court will certainly go to substantial lengths to find a way to uphold a popular law or strike down a bad law, but they don't make things up out of thin air.

Re: Oblivious Supreme Court poised to legalize medical patents

#35

Post by jacques_chester » Thu, Dec 08, 2011, 2:41 AM UTC

sycren wrote: post #24

I hope they don't try to include something like this in ACTA to bring it across to the EU

Countries with universal health systems might be more resistant due to the immediate and visible cost to the respective Treasuries.

Re: Oblivious Supreme Court poised to legalize medical patents

#36

Post by rayiner » Thu, Dec 08, 2011, 2:45 AM UTC

AngryParsley wrote: post #33

leot wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing that so many entrepreneurs seem to hate the large payments that class action lawyers are awarded. Class action lawyers perform the same kind of high-risk high-reward gamble that startups engage in. While tech startups create value by making something useful, these lawyers create value by keeping powerful interests honest. The idea that they are unnecessary or should be capped because consumers will just…

The big difference is that successful class-action lawyers transfer wealth, while successful entrepreneurs create wealth.

When a class-action lawyer sues to enforce anti-trust laws, at least theoretically he is creating wealth. The transfer of money is incidental to an enforcement system that seeks to control the incentive structure of monopolists. Monopolies, of course, create deadweight losses in the economy. Avoidance of deadweight losses are functionally equivalent to creation of wealth.

Now, I'd certainly argue that entrepreneurs create more wealth more effectively. That said, the more we learn about economics the more situations we find where market failures undermine efficient allocations of productive capital. And by and large our solution to those market failures has involved writing laws which are enforced in many cases by plaintiff's lawyers.

Re: Oblivious Supreme Court poised to legalize medical patents

#37

Post by scarmig » Thu, Dec 08, 2011, 2:57 AM UTC

waterlesscloud wrote: post #28

scarmig wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very... sanguine of you to think the Supreme Court is full of bloodless rationalists, computers that read statutes and, via sheer force of deductive reasoning, come to a conclusion. In reality, the Supreme Court is supremely political, and they regularly do shoot down a law because they think it sucks or approve a law because shooting it down would make people angry.

Please provide examples of both assertions.

It's not striking down a law, but you can see the process at work most clearly in Bush v. Gore. It was, on the face of it, a horrible decision, and the court itself said it shouldn't be used for any precedent; it's not been cited once since then.

But it isn't merely a matter of disagreeing with the decision. It's the crass politicization of it. If you look at the breakdown of the vote, the Justices who supported Bush supported Bush, and those who supported Gore supported Gore. (Thomas's wife was heavily involved in Bush's campaign, and O'Conner had said the evening before the election that she'd find Gore's election personally disastrous.)

Nor can ideology account for the decision: the same justices who are pretty stingy when it comes to applying Fourteenth Amendment rights generally suddenly found it imperative to extend it to a radically new situation in an usurpation of state rights with federal judicial might. The converse was also true, as the Justices usually distrustful of states running their own elections suddenly thought that sacrosanct.

Edited to add a particularly damning quote:

"The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does in my view threaten irreparable harm to petitioner Bush, and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election. Count first, and rule upon legality afterwards, is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires." IOW, Scalia is banning the recounting of the votes of undecided legality because it might make Bush's election look less legitimate and cause political turmoil.

Re: Oblivious Supreme Court poised to legalize medical patents

#38

Post by rayiner » Thu, Dec 08, 2011, 3:37 AM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #37

waterlesscloud wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please provide examples of both assertions.

It's not striking down a law, but you can see the process at work most clearly in Bush v. Gore. It was, on the face of it, a horrible decision, and the court itself said it shouldn't be used for any precedent; it's not been cited once since then. But it isn't merely a matter of disagreeing with the decision. It's the crass politicization of it. If you look at the breakdown of the vote, the Justices who supported Bush…

> It's not striking down a law, but you can see the process at work most clearly in Bush v. Gore. It was, on the face of it, a horrible decision, and the court itself said it shouldn't be used for any precedent; it's not been cited once since then

Bush v. Gore is like a once in history Constitutional crisis. It's not representative.

Re: Oblivious Supreme Court poised to legalize medical patents

#39

Post by binarybits » Thu, Dec 08, 2011, 3:39 AM UTC

shadowfiend wrote: post #11

This is an extremely foolish title, and the tone of the article is likewise foolish. It's highly unlikely the Supreme Court has not read the amicus briefs, and almost impossible that they will not before passing judgement. These are not 9 people picked off the street and thrown on the bench to judge what the application of law is, and they don't mess around. Reading pretty much any Supreme Court decision will show yo…

"True change in this area really is something where the Court can only do so much. The definitions of patents in general are determined by Congress and its laws."

Sorry, but this is just completely wrong. The law regarding patentable subject matter is almost entirely judge-made. There are broad categories of inventions in software, medicine, business methods, and elsewhere that clearly were not eligible for patent protection in 1980 and are eligible for patent protection under recent court decisions. This didn't change because Congress passed new legislation. It changed because the courts (primarily the Federal Circuit) changed its mind. Given that fact, it makes sense to criticize the courts for continuing to expand the bounds of patentable subject matter, no?

Re: Oblivious Supreme Court poised to legalize medical patents

#40

Post by shadowfiend » Thu, Dec 08, 2011, 3:53 AM UTC

binarybits wrote: post #39

shadowfiend wrote: post #11

This is an extremely foolish title, and the tone of the article is likewise foolish. It's highly unlikely the Supreme Court has not read the amicus briefs, and almost impossible that they will not before passing judgement. These are not 9 people picked off the street and thrown on the bench to judge what the application of law is, and they don't mess around. Reading pretty much any Supreme Court decision will show yo…

"True change in this area really is something where the Court can only do so much. The definitions of patents in general are determined by Congress and its laws." Sorry, but this is just completely wrong. The law regarding patentable subject matter is almost entirely judge-made. There are broad categories of inventions in software, medicine, business methods, and elsewhere that clearly were not eligible for patent pr…

To some extent. But if you give so much latitude to judges, you're asking for complications. Unfortunately, things like obviousness and originality are not clear cut. If we want limits per se, I think Congress is the place to implement them, not the courts.

That said, it's worth asking whether the courts are actually expanding the bounds of patentable subject matter, or simply upholding the breadth of the existing laws. It doesn't seem like this is a case where they could expand it—that would involve overturning precedent. If they aren't overturning precedent, they're simply saying “yep, the law is in fact this broad”. I'm not super-well-versed in the details of the case, however.