Posts in Government

Director Lee announced that earlier this morning she swore in Russ Slifer to serve as the new Deputy Director of the USPTO. Slifer had been the Director of the USPTO Rocky Mountain Regional Office. He practiced intellectual property law for 20 years, serving for the last 8 years of his private sector practice as the Chief Patent Counsel for Micron Technology in Boise, Idaho.

According to Martin-Wallace, the goal of the Patent Quality Summit is to establish a dialogue between the USPTO and stakeholders so that both sides can obtain a better understanding of where everyone is coming from when we talk about patent quality, and to set expectations going both directions. “Quality is two-fold – both internal and external,” Martin-Wallace explained. “We want to make sure we are delivering quality to stakeholders… patents that can stand up in the courts.”

Unfortunately, the high cost of pharmaceutical medications is why about 50 million adults between the ages of 19 and 64 do not fill out a prescription every year. Medications purchased over the Internet can cost up to 90 percent less than the same medication purchased in a brick-and-mortar pharmacy. It is also easy to understand those cost savings given the ingredients found in online pharmaceuticals. Consumers obviously need better protections to make sure that the medication they’re purchasing is the medication are ordering and not drywall or rat poison.

On one road, legislation such as The Innovation Act poses threats to our patent system. This type of legislation tries to alleviate concerns about litigation costs and frivolous lawsuits. The problem is that such concerns are based on inaccurate data and flawed economic analysis. On the other road, legislation such as the ‘STRONG Patents Act may help to strengthen our patent system. The road we choose will “make all the difference” to future generations.

Incredibly, despite widespread damage to inventors, most staffers still do not understand how the patent system works to create innovation, jobs, and economic growth. They do not understand how patents drive capital to small patent-based businesses thus delivering the vast majority of our new technologies to American consumers. How can it be that they have not heard this perspective? Why aren’t the patent lobbyists in Washington like IPO and AIPLA protecting the patent system? Are the views of inventors so far apart from corporate patent owners? Or are the companies so caught up in other Washington issues that pushing hard for strong patent rights conflicts with other agendas and political asks? Too many Congressional staffers don’t understand the patent system, but staffers are not the ones at fault here.

Significant consensus was reached between representatives of small business and universities at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship on March 19, 2015. The hearing was held to take testimony relating to proposed reforms to the U.S. patent system. The day’s discussion prompted Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) to make the comment that the argument over…

Universities are dependent upon the U.S. patent system and the capacity of that system to protect the legitimate intellectual property rights of individual university inventors and large companies alike. This system drives U.S. innovation and our economic competitiveness in the world. Patents provide universities with the means to ensure that many discoveries resulting from research are transferred to the private sector where those discoveries can be turned into innovative products and processes that power our economy, create jobs, and improve quality of life.

Earlier today the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on patent reform. The hearing was titled The Impact of Abusive Patent Litigation Practices on the American Economy. There was a variety of diverse views presented by the witnesses, including one witness, Krish Gupta, who continued to cite the bogus and thoroughly debunked Bessen-Meurer “study” that erroneously claims that patent trolls…

The order bars the company, MPHJ Technology Investments, LLC, and its law firm from making deceptive representations when asserting patent rights. The settlement with MPHJ, announced in November 2014, is the first time the FTC has taken action using its consumer protection authority against a patent assertion entity.

Fortunately, a new study showing that academic patent licensing contributed more than $1 trillion to the U.S. economy over eighteen years blows the stuffing right out of that straw man. We can only hope Congress gets the message before it turns the patent system into a weapon to squash inventors.

There is no credible evidence behind proposals to make the drastic changes embodied in the Innovation Act, the removal of discretion from judges to judge each case on an individual basis with mandatory stays and fee shifting, and new rules for pleading and discovery that would undermine the ability of legitimate inventors and patent holders from enforcing their rights against infringers.

Inter partes review proceedings unconstitutionally assign to an Article I executive branch tribunal matters reserved for Article III Judges that make up the Federal Judiciary. This is in violation of Separation of Powers principles, which is particularly problematic given that we are talking about property rights being stripped from patent owners by administrative law judges in a proceeding designed to be a district court alternative. These administrative tribunals also adjudicate patent validity without a jury, in violation of patentees’ Seventh Amendment rights.

Earlier today 40 economists and law professors wrote to Senate and House Judiciary leaders explaining that the data it that keeps being cited to justify HR 9, otherwise known as the Innovation Act, is “flawed, unreliable and incomplete.” The professors caution Congress to proceed cautiously, particularly given the numerous misleading and flawed studies that “highly exaggerated claims regarding patent trolls.”

Sadly, this is not an isolated case. I’ve seen similar rejections in a diverse (and utterly random) number of art areas and technologies ranging from predictive computer algorithms, to voice recognition technology, to methods for user-customization of advertising received on a device. While some of the rejected claims were arguably directed to an abstract idea, only a small minority had any apparent connection to “organizing human activity” as that phrase has been used in the case law.

Earlier today the United States Senate confirmed Michelle Lee to head the United States Patent and Trademark Office, a position that has been vacant since the resignation of David Kappos at the end of January 2013. Lee’s official title will be Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.