Extortion rights of rent collectors protected by the US Constitution?

"Lawmakers Move to Grant Banks Immunity Against Patent Lawsuit"
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 14, 2008; Page A22

URL:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021303731.html

First two paragraphs:
"Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has sponsored an unusual provision at the
urging of the nation's banks granting them immunity against an active patent
lawsuit, potentially saving them billions of dollars.
"Adopted with little fanfare, the amendment would prevent a small Texas
company called DataTreasury from collecting damages from banks for
infringing on its patented method for digitally scanning, sending and
archiving checks. The patents were upheld last summer by the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office after they were challenged."

Key paragraph: "The federal government would have to pay $1 billion to
DataTreasury over 10 years as compensation for taking its property under the
amendment, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office."

I thought the government had the right to do things like compel patent
licensing, if it decided to do so. With that right, I would have thought
there'd be an accompanying right to set the fee that rent collecting
parasites were allowed to collect.

NB: Richard Epstein is a leading light in the movement to make
rent-collecting extortion a fundamental right. (He's not mentioned in the
article; that's just an aside.)


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Extortion rights of rent collectors protected by the US Constitution?
    ... First two paragraphs: ... urging of the nation's banks granting them immunity against an active patent ... "The Congress shall have Power...To promote the Progress of Science ... The terms of IP law are at the discretion of Congress. ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario
    ... exactly what they fear the most, a patent lawsuit. ... court issue an injunction stopping the shipment of product that is in litigation over patent infringement. ... The FSF then moves for a patent ... To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: Convert wma to mp3?
    ... restricting people from encoding/decoding without paying for patent? ... paragraphs dis-agree each other. ... holders do NOT allow people to use the patent for encoding via mp3. ...
    (comp.os.linux.misc)