Posts Tagged: "Conservatives"

Conservative leaders wrote the White House applauding this initiative, based on the property rights implications of IP expropriation. These conservative leaders note that China is hardly the only country that steals American IP, and such IP theft imposes significant costs to our economy, impairs American competitiveness and compromises our innovative future… The letter reads in part: “The 301 investigation represents a good first step toward asserting rules-based accountability and recommitting to an American IP-based competition policy. However, trade enforcement is only one pillar of an American economic competitiveness plan.”

The Oil States v. Greene’s Energy Group case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court Nov. 27, 2017, has generated much ink, analysis and opinion. Rightly so, given the profound consequences for the security of exclusive private property rights of limited duration in patents. Among the worthy and constructive reflections, conservative experts and leaders have contributed a fair share… Heritage Foundation legal scholar Alden Abbott, whose background includes service at the Federal Trade Commission and as a senior corporate IP counsel, has summed up the shortcomings of PTAB “patent death squads.” Abbott suggests how the Supreme Court should rule in Oil States: “The best option to fix the Patent Trial and Appeals Board is to get rid of it. There is a powerful legal case that board review violates the U.S. Constitution, and therefore is invalid.”

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.

Congress sent H.R. 5, the House-passed Regulatory Accountability Separation of Powers Restoration Act, to the Senate’s Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee on January 12, 2017. When enacted it will overrule Chevron deference. This enactment will therefore shine the disinfecting sunlight of appellate review where it has not gone before…. Patent practitioners need to realize that the Act will eliminate stare decisis over earlier court approvals of specific Patent Office rules. First, after the Act, it will be an open question whether the Patent Office may use BRI within IPR proceedings. That is because the law will have changed over what deference a court must give Patent Office regulations. In Cuozzo, the Court cited Chevron in analyzing whether rulemaking imposing BRI on IPR proceedings constituted “a reasonable exercise of the rulemaking authority that Congress delegated to the Patent Office.” Cuozzo, 136 S. Ct. at 2144. After walking through a collection of policy rationales that made BRI seem “reasonable” to the majority, the Court concluded by explicitly noting that the “Patent Office’s regulation, selecting the broadest reasonable construction standard, is reasonable in light of the rationales described above. . . .” Id. at 2146.

Will House Freedom Caucus members be conservative on patent reform, or will conservatives continue to support the Obama/Google patent reform agenda? Ironically, while Speaker Boehner has been criticized by conservatives as being a Republican in name only (RINO), several of the members of the House Freedom caucus who serve on the House Judiciary Committee have been anything but conservative on certain votes. For example, when it comes to patent reform at least some self professed Congressional conservatives have decided to side with the Obama Administration, giving Obama corporate supporters everything they want from patent legislation.

Leading organizations of the Conservative Movement have stepped up their game informing Congress on the philosophical reasons for opposing the Innovation Act and its Senate companion, the PATENT Act. This increased patent bill opposition is directed at Republican lawmakers, the political majority party in both houses of Congress. With House leadership deciding to postpone H.R. 9’s floor debate until at least September, the expanded conservative opposition seems to be effective.

”We have corporate interests masquerading the drastic overhaul of the patent system as mere tort reform… It makes no sense to undermine long-standing property rights to address a supposed litigation explosion that doesn’t exist with a supposed tort solution that doesn’t apply.”