Kappos has a couple facts as to how important patents are.

Ned Davis Research found that 80% of the value of Standard & Poor's 500-stock index companies now comes from intangible assets. And according to the U.S. Commerce Dept., American intellectual property comprises more than half of all U.S. exports, driving approximately 40% of the country's growth.

Kappos whistles in the dark with his wish list for Congress to enact.

Among other improvements, these reforms would require a systematic approach for assigning realistic values to infringed patents and provide a new way for parties to reassess a granted patent's validity without a lawsuit.

Kappos apparently is not well informed about the well-developed art of infringement damage assessment. What he really means is he's hoping to cheapen damages so IBM doesn't have to pay so much for infringing. As to "reassess a granted patent's validity without a lawsuit," Kappos ought to talk with reexam maestro Dan Ravicher of PUBPAT about ex parte reexaminations. What this country doesn't need is some potshot shooting range for patents, particularly involving the USPTO. Why? One word: pendancy.

Kappos would like to castrate patent monetization by small businesses that lack the patent muscle of IBM.

Some smaller businesses have fallen prone to patent pawn shops, which buy patents cheap, only to resell or license those patents at disproportionate profits. If we are going to have meaningful patent reform, we need to give small businesses a voice.

Kappos wants small business to have a voice: a very tiny voice. Bless his heart; God bless America.

[W]e won't have broad progress until all parties work with one another, with the right balance, moderation, and the greater good at heart.

Recent court rulings regarding obviousness and declaratory judgment actions are formulas to incite litigation, something Kappos professes to want less of.

The problem with current patent law is lack of clarity. Patent laws are far too vaguely drafted, too subject to judicial interpretation. The upshot, by continual judicial revision, is to promote litigation.

Take the standard for prior art obviousness: 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) - as chronicled in the Patent Prospector, it's been sliding down a slippery slope to subjective inscrutability by an appeals court fearing what the Supreme Court may do in its upcoming KSR v. Teleflex ruling. Regardless of how that ruling turns out, it is no way to have this law codified. But I repeat myself: please see Implicit Pressure, from November 29, 2006. The CAFC has even moved the marker since then, most startlingly in the Pfizer v. Apotex case. This needs to stop, and Congress needs to act, but with equity towards all, not just towards large corporate patent infringers who want to gut enforcement and rob small-time inventors.