Posts Tagged: "President Barack Obama"

Is Trump being bamboozled by Obama holdovers on patent policy?

The USPTO’s Obama holdovers Michelle Lee and Tony Scardino are simply co-opting the exact language used in Obama’s budgets for fiscal years 2015 to 2017 into Trump’s 2018 budget and then directly attributing Obama’s policies and statements to President Trump even though Trump has never taken a position on anti-patent legislation… Are these failed Obama era policies now carried over into the Trump Administration by Obama holdovers simply mistakes? Some sort of scrivener’s error? Or is it a direct attempt to carry over failed Obama policies in the name of President Trump? You be the judge. Perhaps you can tell me: Is Trump being googled by Obama holdovers? Or is Trump himself the swamp?

Fixing America’s Patent System is the Best Strategy to Jump-Start our Stalled Economy

Fixing America’s patent system is necessary for meaningful economic growth for America’s workers and America’s global competiveness over countries like China. Not surprisingly, Judge Michel thinks that “[w]hile we’ve been weakening our patent system in many ways in recent years, China and other countries have been greatly upgrading their patent systems . . . investment is shrinking here and it’s growing elsewhere.” Judge Michel kept returning to the theme that the lack of new jobs “is the biggest single problem in America today,” and that “whether you talk about job creation or growth or revival of distressed cities . . . the innovation ecosystem is at the heart of the solution.”

Pro Bono Efforts by Fish & Richardson Yield Clemency Grants by President Obama

Fish & Richardson announced that it has obtained clemency for five pro bono clients the firm represented through the firm’s participation in The Clemency Project. The Clemency Project is a major initiative launched by the American Bar Association and various other public interest groups in cooperation with the Department of Justice to seek sentence commutations from President Obama for non-violent, low level drug offenders who have already served at least 10 years of lengthy federal prison terms. Fish attorneys contributed over 1,800 pro bono hours to help identify potential candidates for clemency and to prepare individual clemency petitions for those eligible prisoners. Three of those commutations were announced in the past two months; two were announced last week.

Commerce Lists USPTO Director as Vacant, USPTO declines to comment on Michelle Lee

If Lee did not resign and she has been asked to stay on as Director why has the Patent Office declined to comment? Further complicating matters, if you visit the Department of Commerce leadership webpage, the position of Under Secretary for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office is listed as “Vacant.”

Patently Surreal: The Obama Strategic Plan on IP Enforcement

It is almost impossible to believe this report is the work product of the Obama Administration. The section on patents, which begins on page 134, reads like a cross between a Monty Python skit and a Soviet era, propaganda laden news report. Perhaps the Obama Administration is trying to rewrite history and brainwash the entire industry into believing that President Obama has been a tremendous defender of the U.S. patent system. Simply stated, the Obama Administration can write all they want about the importance of the patent system and how patents are critically important for innovation, but the reality is that the future of American innovation has been forfeited (or at least heavily mortgaged) by a calculated, intentional, and willful dismantling of the U.S. patent system for the benefit a handful of politically well connected companies that helped President Obama get elected and then re-elected.