Posts Tagged: "Cato Institute"

This week on Capitol Hill, both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate are quiet for the next two weeks as the House enters district work periods and the Senate holds state work periods. However, various policy institutes around the nation’s capital continue to host events related to technology and innovation, and the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Andrei Iancu, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director, Patent and Trademark Offce v. Erik Brunetti. The week kicks off early on Monday with an all-day event at the Internet Society looking at the prospects of federal legislation to improve consumer data privacy from various angles and the Brunetti oral argument. The Cato Institute will host events related to government regulation of social media, as well as the section of U.S. Internet law which largely eliminates legal liability for online service providers based on user-generated content. The week wraps up with an event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which will look at U.S.-Australia cooperation in the digital economy, among other sectors. 

This week on Capitol Hill will include a series of hearings related to tech and innovation topics on Tuesday at the House of Representatives, where debate will focus on the 2020 budget for NASA and the National Institutes of Health, as well as on technology issues at Veterans Affairs. Senate hearings will take a look at Alzheimer’s research and funding for the Department of Energy. On Wednesday, the Senate IP Subcommittee will hold a hearing to look at gender diversity issues in the U.S. patent system. Elsewhere in D.C., the Cato Institute will look at Medicare drug pricing issues, a topic which has increasingly included discussion of patents, and the American Enterprise Institute will consider consumer data privacy issues in a two-hour event featuring officials from the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice.

This week is quiet on Capitol Hill with Presidents’ Day on Monday, after which the House of Representatives enters a district work period and the Senate is out of session for the rest of the week. However, Washington, D.C., will still host a series of events related to intellectual property, innovation, and technology. Counsel and amici appearing before the U.S. Supreme Court in Mission Product Holdings Inc. v. Tempnology, LLC on Tuesday will offer post-oral argument reflections this Wednesday at the American University Washington College of Law. Earlier that same day, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation looks at the policy debate surrounding the U.S. Postal Service in the e-commerce era. This week in IP, business and tech policy wraps up on Thursday with a look at lunar tech commercialization and other legal matters related to Moon exploration by the Washington Space Business Roundtable.

If wrongly decided, Oil States Energy Services v. Greene’s Energy Group may be the next Kelo v. City of New London decision. At bottom, the case will decide whether patent rights – which are enshrined in our Constitution – are fundamental private property rights, or something less. If the Court adopts the latter perspective, it would radically change the American view of property rights and endanger an innovation edge enjoyed by American companies and consumers alike… Conservatives must be vigilant about the importance of the Oil States case and understand what is at stake. We do not want to wake up on the morning after this decision and find, just as we did after the Kelo decision, that more of our property rights are slipping away. The Supreme Court must uphold our constitutional patent rights and end the administrative usurpation of this judicial responsibility. Our constitutional principles, and the future of American innovation, depend on it.

As President Trump embarks on the renegotiation of NAFTA, it is critical that we seize the opportunity to make it the gold standard in intellectual property rights protections… The stakes are tremendous and cannot be ignored.  In total, it is estimated that intellectual-property theft costs the United States approximately $600 billion per year.  A recent New York Times article notes that this is the “greatest transfer of wealth in history”.

The Supreme Court has scheduled oral argument in Lee v. Tam for January 18… The genesis of the case is a Portland, Oregon all-Asian-American band called The Slants, founded by petitioner Simon Shiao Tam. An application for trademark was made and the USPTO said “NO” on the basis that “The Slants” is a highly disparaging term and therefore must be denied registration under Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act… The cultural and societal value of the free flow of speech trumps government regulation. The Supreme Court should uphold the Constitution and confirm the importance of robust political debate, cultural discourse, and the right to use ANY words as part of a personal identity.