Posts Tagged: "Donald Trump"

The savings impact of directly negotiated drug costs is considered negligible, but intrusion into biomedical pricing will destabilize life science commercialization… Any way you slice it, added commercialization uncertainty resulting from even negligible savings will be seen by the private sector as a foot-in-the-door for more government price controlling… Participants in early stage life science development including research universities and medical centers must watch this issue closely and be ready to join MMA’ s more conspicuous defenders if and when MMA’s ban on Medicare direct negotiations suddenly appears.

When President Donald Trump’s campaign for re-election starts gearing up for the 2020 election season, you will know it when you hear him say that he wants to “keep America great.” Trump has already filed two trademark applications to protect the use of this next incarnation of the political slogan which helped to put him in the White House… The story surrounding Trump’s decision to file the trademarks is a perfect example of his brusque style. An interview with Trump published by The Washington Post, also dated January 18th, describes how the then-President-elect stopped his interview briefly after saying that slogan to the interviewer to ask a lawyer to trademark that slogan. The Post’s coverage clearly states that he immediately wanted to trademark two versions of “Keep America Great,” one with an exclamation point and one without.

I believe it’s not a good thing to be an inventor in the US and I hope that Trump’s “America first” will apply to inventors. Let me explain why. My name is Jean-Paul Castille, I have a degree in Engineering from “Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Métiers” (ENSAM), a major engineering school of France and I am an independent inventor. I am the president of Antor Media Corporation, a US patent licensing firm. My career has been dedicated to invention, the development and commissioning of prototype systems in different areas of the industry.

We know that not only are copyrights grounded in the constitution, but core copyright industries contribute approximately $1.2 trillion to the U.S. economy annually, and employ over 5.5 million American workers. At the same time, however, we are acutely aware that, unfortunately, copyright theft online is rampant, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has increasingly become ill equipped to address even flagrant, willful copyright infringement in the digital world. What we don’t know, however, is how President-Elect Trump and the Trump Administration will view copyright issues, and whether pro-creator copyright reforms will be on the President’s agenda come January 20, 2017. We can, however, make some educated guesses based on Trump’s entertainment industry ties, his potential Supreme Court nominees, and those he is surrounding himself with on his Transition Team and in a Trump Administration that is increasingly taking shape.

President-Elect Donald Trump has announced that he will withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement on his first day in office. So ends more than five years of often heated negotiations led by President Barack Obama’s administration as part of an overall strategy to strengthen the US position in the Pacific Rim region… Pulling out of the TPP is a missed opportunity for the US to pursue its IPR agenda in the Pacific Rim economies.

Text messages sent between Andreesen and Erskine Bowles speak to Zuckerberg’s desire to be able to maintain control of Facebook while possibly serving two years in government… The fact that Zuckerberg is open to serving in government might actually carry some sway with the Trump transition team, which includes a Facebook connection through Peter Thiel… Given Zuckerberg’s stances on Internet issues, one possible position for Zuckerberg could be at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Peter Thiel, Reince Priebus and Jared Kushner are hosting technology industry giants for a policy discussion at Trump Tower on December 14, 2016. Patent reform is likely to be on the agenda as it is one of the issues tech giants (along with big banks and retailers old and new) have invested in heavily for over a decade… Is it possible that the positions of these three key Trump advisors will coalesce around a nuanced patent policy in a Trump Administration along the lines of the recent FTC PAE report, which sought to distinguish innovators and their need to enforce patent rights from bad actions of those who employ abusive litigation tactics?

Automation technology in the restaurant industry, such as interactive kiosks that replace waiters by taking customer orders, is both a cost-cutting move and an investment in improved customer service, Puzder argues, citing the speed, accuracy and convenience of such technologies… Overall, Puzder doesn’t seem to want to replace his workers with machines so much as he would like to see an end to government regulations that increase labor costs. This echoes an anti-regulatory regime that looks to be shaping up with choices like climate change-critic Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head up the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Obamacare-critic Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) to serve as the U.S. Secretary for Health and Human Services.

Bayh-Dole is running on autopilot without Executive branch oversight and U.S. patents are no longer the world’s gold standard. Without a course correction, we could be headed back to the bad old days… Bayh-Dole has become a driver of the U.S. economy. Every day of the year universities form two new companies and two new products from their inventions are commercialized. University spin out companies tend to stay in state becoming significant contributors to the regional economy… Bayh-Dole is a recognized best practice. The Chinese have adopted it while strengthening their patent system to better compete with us.

Wilbur Ross, Trump’s nominee to run Commerce, has a zero tolerance for IP theft, which indicates a possible change in direction for US patent policy… Ross has a long view on the American economy and has had some exposure to patents. Many of the manufacturing, textile and telecommunications companies he has refinanced owned patents. Ross as the “bankruptcy king” or “vulture capitalist” dealt with patents as one of the many assets to use to help turn around a distressed company. Using patents as collateral for a loan should not be controversial or exotic.

Several weeks ago Internet Association President Michael Beckerman sent a letter to President Elect Donald Trump and the Trump Transition Team. The Internet Association is made up of companies that are by and large openly hostile to the U.S. patent system and innovators. The letter touched upon issues ranging from copyright safe harbors under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to recommended reforms to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to open access to the Internet and, of course, patent reform. I will confine my comments (see below) to the Internet Association’s patent reform commentary… Not that it should come as any surprise to anyone who follows the patent reform debate, but what the Internet Association says here is a lie.

Internet attorneys spend our days fighting the good fight – at least that’s what I think I do. In a time where judges confuse metadata and metatags, and people believe everything online is “in the public domain,” we march on. We worry about keeping the first amendment in tact and relentlessly champion Section 230, even when our protagonists are less than ideal (i.e., Backpage.com, thedirty.com). For better or for worse, we do our best, to make the Internet a place where people can have their opinions, and the companies we represent don’t get sued for them. So, what happens when the CEO of Reddit, one of the largest community forum websites out there, decides to have a little fun at the expense of Trump supporters/moderators on the subreddit, r/The_Donald? Let’s put it this way, nothing good.

Now that Trump has won, the discussion has narrowed to whether Trump will keep patents weak or make patents great again. From the outside perspective, it is a curious exercise to say the least… Why are we even asking these questions? Property is property, right? Can you remember an election where people were asking if their deed would keep squatters out of their living room depending on who won the presidency? I don’t. It seems a preposterous question. After all, the deed on your house is a property right and everybody knows the government will back it up and eject the squatters. So why then do we, or should we, have to ask whether a Trump Administration will be in favor of strong patent rights? It all seems bizarre to say the least.

Although the tech industry is big in America, the industry itself was not big on the idea of a Trump presidency. Trump, however, did have one very vocal supporter from the tech community: German-American entrepreneur, billionaire venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel… There are inklings that the patent troll narrative might actually have sway with Thiel, despite his Silicon Valley outsider status. An article published in September 2014 by Bloomberg pertaining to a corporate restructuring of Intellectual Ventures (IV), a Patent Assertion Entity (PAE) often portrayed in the media as a patent troll, provides some clues. Thiel is quoted as saying: “I think IV is basically a parasitic tax on the tech industry.”

By outsourcing manufacturing to the lowest bidder abroad not only have we destroyed the working middle class in America, but also we are also increasingly turning over our last economic advantage – our intellectual property… While there is nothing wrong with negotiating better, smarter trade deals, what America really needs is smarter manufacturing policies. After all, what exactly are better, smarter negotiators going to do if the United States remains an inhospitable climate for business, with extraordinarily high tax rates, unreasonable environmental regulations and loopholes that only the richest corporations can take advantage of? How could we ever reclaim widespread manufacturing in the United States if the deck is stacked against the industry?