Tax Update Blog: Permalink

« Previous · Tax Update Blog Home · Next »

DEATH TO TROLLS

January 23, 2007

The American Bar Association tax section's Partnerships Committee met last week to talk about tax patents. Tax Analysts's Lee Sheppard was there ($link):

"I originally thought that this topic was kind of a circus freak show," Blake Rubin of Arnold & Porter told the American Bar Association Section of Taxation's Partnerships Committee at its January 19 meeting in Hollywood, Fla. He was referring to patenting tax advice, which has progressed from nuisance to real problem. "It's all about lawsuits. It's all about suing people for infringement," he said. Yes, readers, some of the folks who have patented tax advice are patent trolls.

Really? You don't say?

They make fixing the problem sound hard:

Treasury is having continuing discussions with the Patent and Trademark Office, according to Treasury Tax Legislative Counsel Michael Desmond. "There is not a real silver bullet answer," he told the Partnerships Committee.

I guess it only seems easy because I'm not a lawyer. I would think you could stamp out tax patent jackals by inserting something like this in the appropriate part of the U.S. Code:

(a) No patent shall be granted for any method of compliance or planning with respect to Title 26 of the U.S. Code.

(b) Any patent granted prior to the date of enactment of this Section with respect to a patent referred to in subsection (a) shall be null and void.

Who would block such eminently sensible legislation?

Treasury is discussing legislative solutions with the House Ways and Means Committee, which is sympathetic to the long-term tax policy issue raised by patents. Trouble is that Ways and Means has no jurisdiction over patents. In both houses, that jurisdiction belongs to the Judiciary committees, which, not surprisingly, are influenced by patent lawyers. "They believe in patents. It's their life," (Loyola tax professor Ellen) Aprill quipped. Desmond worried that the discussion could degenerate into a jurisdictional dispute.

Ah, yes. The jackal lobby.

      Bookmark: del.icio.us • Digg • reddit