Posts Tagged: "Commerce Department"

IP and Innovation on Capitol Hill: Week of April 1: Medicare Drug Pricing, Lost Einsteins and Data Privacy

This week on Capitol Hill will include a series of hearings related to tech and innovation topics on Tuesday at the House of Representatives, where debate will focus on the 2020 budget for NASA and the National Institutes of Health, as well as on technology issues at Veterans Affairs. Senate hearings will take a look at Alzheimer’s research and funding for the Department of Energy. On Wednesday, the Senate IP Subcommittee will hold a hearing to look at gender diversity issues in the U.S. patent system. Elsewhere in D.C., the Cato Institute will look at Medicare drug pricing issues, a topic which has increasingly included discussion of patents, and the American Enterprise Institute will consider consumer data privacy issues in a two-hour event featuring officials from the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice.

IPWatchdog

April 1, 2019

Innovator Organizations Applaud Delrahim Action on SEPs, Plead for Restoration of Injunctive Relief for Infringement

A number of organizations, including Ericsson, Nokia, Philips, Qualcomm, the Innovation Alliance and the Licensing Executives Society, have sent two separate letters to U.S. Attorney General William Barr, USPTO Director Andrei Iancu, and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross stating their support for the United States’ decision to withdraw the Department of Justice, Antitrust Division’s assent to the 2013 joint DOJ-U.S. Patent and Trademark Office “Policy Statement on Remedies for Standards-Essential Patents Subject to Voluntary F/RAND Commitments” (the 2013 Joint Policy Statement). The letter sent by Ericsson, Nokia, Philips, and Qualcomm begins by explaining that those signing the letters collectively spend many billions of dollars annually to “the development of cutting-edge that substantially contribute to the social welfare and quality of life of U.S. consumers,” and “and employ tens of thousands of people in the U.S.” The letter goes on to explain that injunctions are necessary to address the widespread patent infringement that has occurred in recent years; infringement that risks innovators’ ability to continue to innovate and create next generation technologies. Without property protections it is economically irrational to invest the billions of dollars required to create cutting-edge technologies.

Eileen McDermott & Gene Quinn

March 18, 2019