Posts Tagged: "Congress"

The Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property today held a hearing on Oversight of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), with USPTO Director Kathi Vidal as the sole witness. Only a handful of senators questioned Vidal, and only one significantly challenged her in questioning. The hearing differed considerably from the House IP Subcommittee’s Oversight Hearing in April, where Vidal was repeatedly taken to task on the Office’s then-recently issued Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM).

Today, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) published a white paper titled Innovation Wars: How China Is Gaining on the United States in Corporate R&D showing that, while the United States continues to enjoy a lead in several key sectors when surveying the world’s largest corporate investors in research and development (R&D), its largest economic rival is gaining and could achieve parity with the U.S. in about a decade.

This week in Washington IP news, a House subcommittee is turning its attention to self-driving cars and how U.S. companies can compete with their Chinese counterparts. The Senate Small Business Committee will host several women entrepreneurs to testify on how women’s participation in business can be increased. Elsewhere, the U.S. Copyright Office (USCO) is meeting to discuss generative AI’s impact on copyright law and policy.

On Thursday morning, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) held a legislative markup hearing to debate amendments to S. 2333, the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Response Act (PAHPARA), the reauthorization bill to extend the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA). If enacted as currently drafted, PAHPARA would direct federal agencies to study alternative models for funding biomedical research, including prize systems that have been routinely rejected as a viable model by pro-innovation advocates.

I was told that elected officials count on—in fact, they need—constituent input to be effective legislators. After my patents were unjustly cancelled at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), I started the journey to do this very thing. Since January of 2022, I have visited Congress and the Senate two dozen times. I have visited over 200 offices telling my story and advocating for the “little” inventors, like me.

A group of herring fishermen have filed their opening brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in a case that asks the Court to overturn its “Chevron doctrine,” which says courts should defer to administrative agencies’ interpretation of the statutes delegated to them. In the 1984 ruling in Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., the Supreme Court held that a court “may not substitute its own construction of a statutory provision for a reasonable interpretation made by [the agency charged with administering the statute],” where the statute is ambiguous.

The House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet met today to hear from a number of witnesses about the intersection of intellectual property rights and consumers’ right to repair products they own. The concerns voiced by witnesses and congress members today centered around harm and cost to consumers as a result of technological protection measures (TPMs) and increased use of IP tools such as design patents to thwart competition for after-market parts.

Rattled by the failure of the Biden Administration to bow to pressure to misuse the march-in rights provision of the Bayh-Dole Act so the government can regulate prices on products based on federally funded inventions, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and his allies are doubling down. And the impact of National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported research is now in jeopardy. Sanders taunted the Administration, pledging to hold up the nomination of Dr. Monica Bertagnolli to head the NIH until President Biden submits to his demands to do more to control drug prices, including requiring that any therapy-based on an invention arising from NIH funding must be sold at a “reasonable price.”

On July 12, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property held its second hearing in two months on the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) developments and intellectual property rights. This most recent hearing focused on potential violations of copyright law by generative AI platforms, the impact of those platforms on human creators, and ways in which AI companies can implement technological solutions to protect copyright owners and consumers alike.

On July 11, the Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP), released a policy report advocating for a pro-innovation legislative and administrative agenda to counteract a series of shocks to the U.S. patent system over the past two decades. This pro-innovation agenda has the direct support of several C4IP members who formerly held high-ranking government positions and are now calling on the federal government to correct several areas of patent law that have improperly tilted the playing field in favor of corporate infringers and foreign counterfeiters.

This week in Washington IP news, the Senate IP subcommittee will hear about the potential impact of AI on copyright law. Elsewhere, the House Judiciary Committee plans to grill FTC Chair Linda Khan and the House Space Committee will talk about how the U.S. can maintain its leadership position in the commercial space industry.

On the evening of July 5, inventor advocacy group US Inventor hosted a webinar to discuss the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) recently introduced into the U.S. Senate by Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons (D-DE). The featured guest speaker was Retired U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul Michel, who has been involved in the development of PERA’s draft legislative text and has personally supported PERA as an important step in “reviv[ing] the faltering U.S. innovation system” by abrogating the series of U.S. Supreme Court rulings that greatly expanded judicial exceptions to patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101.

Less than one week after a bipartisan group of senators introduced the Promoting and Respecting Economically Vital American Innovation Leadership Act (PREVAIL) Act of 2023, the House yesterday introduced a companion bill. The bill is also sponsored on a bipartisan basis by Representatives Ken Buck (R-CO) and Deborah Ross (D-NC). Following the introduction of the PREVAIL Act by Senators Chris Coons (D-DE), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) last week, Jamie Simpson, who is the Council for Innovation Promotion’s (C4IP) Chief Policy Officer and Counsel and Former Chief Counsel for the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, told IPWatchdog that it will be important to monitor whether the House introduces companion legislation in the coming weeks. She noted that “it’s really promising that the Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate IP Subcommittee are behind these bills. We’re getting closer to a chance of something happening.”

Last week, Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) launched the long-awaited legislative campaign to revive the faltering U.S. innovation system, jointly introducing one bill to restore patent eligibility and another to boost patent reliability at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).  As the chair and ranking member of the Senate subcommittee on Intellectual Property, they are well-positioned to move these bipartisan bills forward. They got assists from Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI), who joined as original co-sponsors on the PREVAIL Act. While Coons and Tillis are well-placed, Durbin is even more so as he chairs the Judiciary Committee and serves as the number two leader of the majority party.