Posts Tagged: "Congressman Chabot"

Several weeks ago, the House Small Business Committee held a hearing titled ZTE: A Threat to America’s Small Businesses to explore the economic and national security threats posed by the Chinese telecommunications equipment and systems firm ZTE. The day’s discussion focused on ways that American small businesses could protect themselves from ZTE specifically and Chinese-backed entities more generally as well as the mixed signals being sent by the administration of President Donald Trump regarding ZTE.

On the morning of Wednesday, July 11th, the House Small Business Committee held a hearing titled Innovation Nation: How Small Businesses in the Digital Technology Industry Use Intellectual Property. Though the witness panel was not quite as one-sided as those seen testifying in front of the House IP Subcommittee in recent years, an informed observer could not help but conclude that yet another opportunity to seriously address the damaged state of the U.S. patent system was missed to the detriment of many of the small businesses which the committee purports to protect.

found it disturbing that the Director Iancu would circumvent the prerogative of Congress with recently announced proposed PTAB claim construction changes, though she admitted the decision wasn’t unlawful. She expounded for several minutes on issues of res judicata, which could tie the hands of the PTAB in light of district court or U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) decisions regarding patent validity. “[This] would completely blow up what we were trying to do as a Congress,” Lofgren said. “It looks to me that the people who disagreed with [the AIA] and lost in the Congress, they went to the Supreme Court, they lost in the Supreme Court, and now they’re going to you, and you are reversing what the Congress decided to do and what the Court said was permissible to do.”

The House Judiciary Committee will set the agenda for any intellectual property legislative reforms that will arise over the next two years during the 115th Congress, and the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet will take the lead for the full House Judiciary Committee. Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) is once again Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and in that role will continue to have tremendous influence on any intellectual property related matters… At the start of the 114th Congress, Congressman Darrell Issa was made Chair of the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet. Despite being an inventor himself, the bombastic Issa has aligned himself with Google and other Silicon Valley elites. Issa is not viewed as a friend of independent inventors, and instead lambasts patents trolls as often as he can. While no one likes a patent troll, Issa has taken the unusual step to equate patent trolls with all patent owners who enforce their patents.

With respect to intellectual property it is the House Judiciary Committee that will set the agenda for any potential legislative reform over the next two years, with the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet leading the way. The often controversial Darrell Issa has lost his leadership position on the House Oversight Committee, but he has gained the gavel of this IP subcommittee. Few anticipate that he will easily be relegated to the back bench, so look for an active and bumpy ride over the next two years.