The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is inviting public comments on a highly controversial rule change it is trying to rush through without Congressional approval. These proposed changes eliminate the ability for third parties to help clean bad patents out of the system — patents that are often used against open source. The USPTO deadline for comments is very close, June 20.
In short, it will make it harder for the Unified Patents and the McCoy Smiths of the world to challenge bad patents.
The patents that Unified challenges are often invalid, but nonetheless widely asserted by the worst abusers of the patent system.