Posts Tagged: "US Chamber of Commerce"

“Increasing numbers of US operating companies dislike patent protection,” Ding explained to IAM. “[T]he production and manufacture of products are increasingly located in Asia and Asian companies have more and more patents… opportunities are being transferred to the East just like manufacturing was.” * * * Although strong patent licensing activities are surely welcome news to Huawei and the many people employed by that firm, stakeholders in the U.S. patent system likely can’t help but see this as a further harbinger that China’s innovation economy will overtake ours in the coming years.

On July 28th, 2017, China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) announced a new set of regulations which are intended to streamline the examination of patent applications in certain burgeoning fields of technology. The new policy, which comes in response to “the central government’s call for an improved business environment, streamlined procedures for administrative approval, and the booming market,” will allow for the examination of both utility model and industrial design patent applications; SIPO guidelines issued as recently as five years ago only covered a single patent application designation, invention patents.

At this moment in history almost everything we thought we knew about global patent protection is being challenged. The U.S. is not the most patent friendly jurisdiction in the world, instead being tied for 10th with Hungary, which really puts into perspective the fall from grace patent rights are having in America… There is no doubt that the U.S. continues to take steps backwards due to variety of self- inflicted wounds. The omnipresent threats of more patent reform, a Supreme Court that has created unprecedented uncertainty surrounding what is patent eligible (see e.g., here, here and here), and a Patent Trial and Appeal Board that has been openly hostile to property owners (see e.g., here and here), allows harassment of certain patent owners over and over again, all the while failing in its mission to provide relief from patent trolls. Meanwhile, a number of countries around the world have taken positive steps forward on the patent front, including countries you might not ordinarily consider as patent friendly jurisdictions.

The problem with not having an independent invention defense, according to Lemely, is that people who invent themselves couldn’t possibly find out about what others have invented because these inventions lay in unpublished patent applications at the Patent Office. “You have people who genuinely tried not to infringe,” Lemley said… While Professor Lemley is entitled to his opinion, and he is an excellent and formidable attorney that no one should ever take for granted, he is not entitled to his own facts. Deliberate disdain for patent property is a purposeful business model driving mega-tech IT incumbents. This business model is called “efficient infringement.” Efficient infringement is a cold-hearted business calculation whereby businesses decide it will be cheaper to steal patented technology than to license it and pay a fair royalty to the innovator, which they would do if they were genuinely trying not to infringe as Professor Lemley suggests.

According to the Association of American Publishers, the publishing industry as a whole has lost $80 to $100 million dollars to online piracy annually. From 2009 to 2013, the number of e-book Internet piracy alerts that the Authors Guild of America has received from their membership had increased by 300%. During 2014, that number doubled. I’m certain that in 2016, the statistics will go even higher.