Posts Tagged: "innovation"

Today’s hearing of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet on Oversight of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) demonstrated some confusion on the part of Congress about the intent of USPTO Director Kathi Vidal’s recent Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on changes to Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) processes, and suggested the Subcommittee members believe she may be exceeding her authority.

With the planet now awash in unused vaccines, efforts are underway to extend the TRIPS waiver to our COVID diagnostics and therapeutics (terms that are poorly defined). By the way, China is considered a “developing country” that could use the waiver. The U.S. Trade Representative asked the U.S. International Trade Commission to investigate whether or not such an extension is justified. That effort includes seeking public comments, which are due by Friday, May 5, 2023. The Bayh-Dole Coalition, which I lead, just submitted to following letter to US ITC Secretary, Lisa Barton, laying out some of the many reasons why the extension would be a colossal blunder.

On April 18, 2023, Senator Chris Coons (D-Del), Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, and Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, convened a substantive bipartisan hearing to discuss how to address “Foreign Competitive Threats to American Innovation and Economic Leadership.”  Significantly, Chairman Coons asked Mark Cohen, Director and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, the about the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in eBay, Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388 (2006), which Chairman Coons observed, “made it difficult to get injunction relief in terms of strengthening the fundamental rights of patent holders.”

In honor of World IP Day 2023, IPWatchdog yesterday hosted a webinar titled after this year’s theme, “Women and Intellectual Property: Accelerating Innovation and Creativity.” The webinar was sponsored by IP.com and focused on the many ways that advocates for the U.S. intellectual property system can actively create an environment for young professionals to begin thinking about how they can approach careers in the field of IP law. Leading the charge was Renee Quinn, Chief Operating Officer of IPWatchdog, who has handled the business side of IPWatchdog, Inc. for the past 16 years. She was joined by Alison Erickson, Assistant General Counsel, Hallmark; Susanne Hollinger, Chief Intellectual Property Counsel, Newell Brands; and Marlene Valderrama, Senior IP Assets Manager and Lead Technology Scout, Halliburton.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) held its East Coast Listening Session on AI Inventorship today, featuring both USPTO staff and patent stakeholder speakers contemplating possible approaches to patenting in a world in which generative artificial intelligence (AI) almost seems to have snuck up on everyone. While many speakers cautioned against moving too quickly to change the rules for AI-generated inventions, others warned that doing nothing could result in chaos for the USPTO and grave economic and innovation losses for the country.

One day before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is set to hold its first public listening session on AI inventorship, the U.S. Supreme Court today denied certiorari in the case of Thaler v. Vidal, which asked the Court to consider the question: “Does the Patent Act categorically restrict the statutory term ‘inventor’ to human beings alone?” Dr. Stephen Thaler lost his case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) last August, when the CAFC said the USPTO’s reading of the statute as clearly referring to inventors as natural person was “unambiguously” correct.

This week in Washington IP news, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and others celebrate World Intellectual Property Day with multiple events. A House subcommittee holds a hearing overseeing recent developments at the USPTO. The Senate is also in session as it discusses the two new finalized rules from the Small Business Administration on expanding capital access to small businesses.

On April 20, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential opinion in FS.com v. International Trade Commission affirming the ITC’s determination that fiber optic cable distributor FS.com violated 19 U.S.C. § 1337 by importing goods infringing upon patent claims owned by Corning Optical Communications. This relatively short Federal Circuit decision dealt mainly with FS.com’s enablement arguments on appeal, which the appellate court nixed after finding that skilled artisans would understand an inherent upper limit to allegedly open-ended claims on fiber optic connection densities.

The European Union is reportedly considering sweeping new regulations for the licensing and litigation of standard essential patents (SEPs), which make fair-minded observers wonder whether any sane adults are in charge at the European Commission (EC). The EU’s proposed new regulatory regime is scheduled to be released on April 26 by the Directorate for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW) of the European Commission (EC). And recently leaked drafts suggest that proposal will contain sweeping new regulations that will effectively put an end to the licensing and litigation of SEPs as it exists today.

There are often situations where a company has come into contact with intellectual property that it cannot allow to spread to a product in development. One example is a joint development project between two companies where the IP for the jointly developed product cannot seep into other products but where each company must develop products that interface with the jointly developed one. This situation can occur when groups create standards that involve IP from various sources.

In late March, news broke that the European Commission was drafting sweeping regulations on the licensing of standard essential patents (SEPs). Commentators predict the draft will be released in late April and, although this is an early draft that will likely evolve, below we offer the following initial observations. In its current form, the new regulatory framework would encourage increased transparency in SEP licensing through several new policies and procedures. In particular, the regulations would establish a “competence center” at the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) to act as a sort of clearinghouse for SEP issues (both technical and economic). The EUIPO does not currently have patent expertise; EP patents are the purview of the European Patent Office (EPO), which is separate from the European Union and includes non-EU members.

Although the mining and metallurgical sectors are still seen as environmentally unfriendly industries, innovation in these sectors has been increasing since the beginning of the century, including in the development of green technologies. Four years ago, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) released a study measuring innovation in the mining industry with patents, “Mining patent data: Measuring innovation in the mining industry with patents”, showing a sharp increase in the number of correlated patent applications since 2005, which is a clear sign of the growth in investments in R&D and innovation made by these industries.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property held a hearing today featuring a panel of patent-savvy witnesses to underscore the crucial role intellectual property plays in the U.S. economy and to define the biggest threats to IP rights, both foreign and domestic. The conclusion of most panelists as to what one step is most important in reestablishing the United States as an IP powerhouse was that we need to clean up our own IP system at home in order to even begin addressing threats from foreign competitors like China.

The Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP) on Monday held a webinar featuring some big names in the IP world to clear up what the organization characterizes as misguided views on the use of Title 28 of the U.S. Code, Section 1498(a). The event was prompted in part by a recent U.S. government statement of interest filed in a patent infringement suit against Moderna, Inc.’s COVID-19 vaccine. That statement argued that Moderna should be released from infringement liability under the terms of a government contract that “authorize[d] and consent[ed] to all use and manufacture” of any U.S. patented invention.

Just when you think you have enough things to worry about, you stumble  upon  one more. In its wisdom, Congress enacted a “Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Plan” as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. The program kicks in by imposing “maximum fair prices” for drugs as determined by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). In setting these prices, Congress included such factors as the R&D costs for each drug and whether they have been recovered and the current cost of producing and distributing the drug in question. But it was the third criteria which caught my eye—“Prior Federal financial support for novel therapeutic discovery and development with respect to the drug.”