Posts Tagged: "Congressman Issa"

“Let’s talk a bit about intellectual property rights,” Undersecretary of Commerce and Director of NIST Walter Copan said at the LES Silicon Valley conference on Wednesday, April 25, 2018. “IP rights are American property rights.” This simple, declarative statement by Director Copan was as important as it was direct. These words were spoken on the morning after the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Oil States v. Greene’s Energy, which rather than saying patents are a property right instead called patents merely a “government franchise.”

Earlier today Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA), announced that he will not seek re-election in 2018 and will retire from Congress. Issa, who currently Chairs the House’s Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet has been an outspoken advocate for the need for more patent reform… If Republicans hold on to a majority in the House it seems likely that Congressman Doug Collins (R-GA) will take over as Chair of the House IP Subcommittee. Collins, an ally to inventors and creators, is currently Vice-Chair of the House IP Subcommittee. If Collins is granted the gavel that would be good news for patent owners and those generally supportive of strong intellectual property rights.

As we mark the close of yet another year, we’re provided with a perfect opportunity to look back on the previous twelve months and see what has transpired. No one could call it a good year for patent owners (except those with the largest pockets, of course) starting with the United States’ 10th-place ranking among national patent systems in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s IP Index, and it didn’t appear as though any weaknesses in uncertain patentability across the U.S. technological landscape were addressed in a positive manner this year. It’s inevitable that the ball will drop on New Year’s Eve and calendars everywhere will turn from 2017 to 2018. Whether the U.S. federal government will be able to stop the death knell sounding doom for our nation’s patent system, however, is still anyone’s guess and it seems far from likely.

The Facebooks, Googles and Netflixes of the world, edge providers that provide Internet services via websites but not an Internet connection like ISPs offer, have every reason to support the current net neutrality regime at the FCC because it benefits their bottom line, preventing ISPs from charging them for the incredible amount of bandwidth which they eat up. Proponents of net neutrality have presented the debate to the public as the individual consumer versus the larger ISPs, which has been successful in increasing regulations for ISPs having much smaller subscriber bases and lower market capitalizations than edge providers. While ISPs are prevented from zero-rating, or offering digital content for free to subscribers, under the current net neutrality regime, Facebook and Twitter are increasingly offering live sports broadcasts for free to their users.

There are clearly many thousands of companies both large and small with far greater experience and in a far better position to advise Congress on the issue of patent reform. So why Mapbox? As is so frequently the case whenever business and politics intersect, follow the money! We have done just that and we’ve found that a no-name, no-experience company like Mapbox, without any patent applications and no patent litigation experience became thrust into the public debate over patents because all the money people behind Mapbox are card carrying members of the anti-patent efficient infringer lobby.

“I think at the end of the day, patents are either valid or invalid as a legal instrument and therefore it’s not very helpful to talk about quality or ‘good’ or ‘bad,” Judge Michel said. “They’re either valid or not valid and with respect to someone practicing the technology, the patent is either infringed as properly construed or it is not infringed.”

With all of this money, it seems the efficient infringer lobby has managed to find an unlikely ally in Congress — someone who made his money as an innovator who defended his patents as a patent plaintiff, which apparently makes him a patent troll. At the end of the day, it may not be entirely fair to characterize Congressman Darrell Issa as a patent troll. Instead, he seems more of a swamp creature of the type that President Trump campaigned against. An individual who has fed from those who are actively trying to muck up the U.S. patent system in favor of large, entrenched entities and to the disadvantage of small, innovative patent owners who have previously always been the driving force of innovation and job creation in America.

Issa decried Judge Gilstrap’s “overreach” in denying a motion to transfer venue in a case coming after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC, a decision which restricted the venue statute for patent infringement cases. “It is, in fact, an act that I find reprehensible by that judge,” Issa said… American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) noted that Issa’s further assertion that Judge Gilstrap was motivated by personal bias to promote community interests “extended beyond a challenge of the legal precedent to a personal attack on Judge Gilstrap and his integrity as a jurist.”

“Wrongdoing should be punished more severely so that IP infringers will pay a heavy price,” Xi said. At a time when President Xi is actively moving China’s IP policy to a place where infringers are met with harsher penalties, U.S. leadership in Congress, especially in the House of Representatives, seems to be opening their arms yet again to the efficient infringer lobby. Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House IP subcommittee, support legislation and poor narratives that continue attempts to further gut the U.S. patent system, allowing infringers a free holiday and the ability to infringe without consequence or penalty.

House IP subcommittee chair Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) led off the hearing by discussing the large number of interests who are often on Capitol Hill to discuss their issues with “patent trolls,” including the “genius ones” which have only been developed in recent years. Despite the intent of the America Invents Act (AIA) of 2011 to weed bad patents out of the system, “patent trolls” remain active. Issa felt there were a few reasons for this, including the fact that such entities make money and that good patents could still be used to assert unreasonable claims. “Why innovate when it’s far easier and more profitable to simply purchase a patent, acquire one, acquire the rights to a patent, perhaps one that has never been licensed, bully businesses into writing a check, go away without ever seriously litigating,” Issa said. He said that 80 percent of “patent troll” litigation focuses on small business. “Simply put, we should not confuse ‘Making America Great Again’ with ‘Making American Patent Trolls Richer Again,’” Issa said. Although Issa was pleased with the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision on patent venue in TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods Group Brands, he recoiled at what he felt was an “overreach” by Judge Rodney Gilstrap from the Eastern District of Texas (E.D. Tex.); Issa felt that Gilstrap misinterpreted the Supreme Court’s decision in TC Heartland by denying a motion to transfer venue from E.D. Tex. in Raytheon v. Cray. “It is, in fact, an act that I find reprehensible by that judge,” Issa said.

Only $128,000 collected from a combined 13 cases? That is less than $10,000 per case, which doesn’t even approach the nuisance value the truly bad actors, the true patent trolls that Issa himself and so many others rail against as extortion artists seek to collect. Indeed, the FTC report on Patent Assertion Entities from October 2016 suggested that settlements of less than $300,000 suggested malicious and malevolent behavior that should raise suspicions of patent trolling. If that is true, what does this say about the ongoing enforcement campaign of Issa’s own patents? It would certainly seem that there are all the indicia of patent trolling that Issa so frequently enjoys pontificating about when he witnesses the behavior displayed by others.

For the first 220 years of United States black letter law and precedent based directly on the U.S. Constitution, patents are property rights. Even the Republican Party Platform states that patents are property rights. Issa disagrees with all of that. Issa seems to believe that patents are instead some sort of public entitlement like food stamps as is evident in his bill, the America Invents Act, and his continuing actions even last week. Issa’s hypocrisy is so blatant, so obvious and so up front that I’m not sure he even understands what he just said, which is a very dangerous problem. So long as Darrell Issa remains in key lawmaking position in the Republican leadership in Congress, venture capital, patenting, new technologies, startups and jobs will continue to flee from the U.S. to China.

Michelle Lee seems to still be Director. She is signing patents and Federal Register Notices, but both Commerce and USPTO decline comment on her status… Presumably at some time we will be told who is the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, but until then that information is being protected as if it is a State secret. Information on who is running the USPTO seems to be on a need to know basis and I guess the public just doesn’t need to know.

The subcommittee convened a hearing to discuss issues of judicial transparency and ethics which affect the system of U.S. federal courts. Republican members of the subcommittee mainly focused on ways of making the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system and a wide array of court proceedings more available to the public… Perhaps the most contentious was Osterreicher’s support for increased electronic communications, especially where it involved cameras in the courtroom… Aside from privacy, some Members were concerned that introducing cameras into the courtroom would encourage grandstanding and playing to the camera.