Posts Tagged: "Heritage foundation"

This week in our nation’s capital, Congress is mostly quiet during the work period, although the House Small Business Committee heads out to Kansas City for a hearing on employee shortages for small businesses outside of notable technology hubs. The Center for Strategic and International Studies kicks off the week with a look at innovations at the Missile Defense Agency. Elsewhere, The Heritage Foundation explores bioethics, New America looks at potential data privacy legislation and The Brookings Institution focuses on China’s tech sector and its threat to American tech dominance.

This week, the U.S. Senate will hold hearings on enhancing drone innovation and addressing cybersecurity concerns; reducing prescription drug prices; and developments in geothermal energy technologies. The House of Representatives will host a hearing on clean energy tech development as well as a markup meeting on a proposed bill to increase participation in STEM careers. Meanwhile, think tanks the American Enterprise Institute and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation will take a look at the patent reform debate with Representative Steve Stivers (R-OH) and explore the potential effects of proposed drug pricing reforms on innovation in the pharmaceutical sector, respectively.

This week, both houses of Congress sit silent during scheduled work periods, although the House Infrastructure Subcommittee will host a hearing on rural broadband Internet access in Minnesota. Back in Washington, D.C., tech and innovation think tanks kick off the week with an event on bridging the STEM education gap hosted by the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes. Later in the week, the American Enterprise Institute explores issues in promoting security in 5G networks, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation meets at the NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg to discuss standards setting for artificial intelligence tech, and the Brookings Institution focuses on the CIA’s efforts to police online channels to identify threats while balancing those activities with Americans’ civil liberties.

This week in Washington, D.C., Capitol Hill is silent due to district work periods for the House of Representatives and state work periods for the Senate. However, the nation’s capital is still very busy with a collection of think tank events related to innovation and technology. A pair of events at New America looks at how technology and social media can stem the tide of extremist ideologies or how advances in DNA testing can help solve cold cases. Cybersecurity challenges at the next Summer Olympic Games are the topic of discussion at the Wilson Center. The Heritage Foundation also hosts a pair of events looking at how the Constitutional Framers viewed property and issues with China-based Huawei’s dominance in 5G. Closing out the week is a Friday event at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation exploring challenges to the U.S. Postal Service in the e-commerce era.

The Oil States v. Greene’s Energy Group case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court Nov. 27, 2017, has generated much ink, analysis and opinion. Rightly so, given the profound consequences for the security of exclusive private property rights of limited duration in patents. Among the worthy and constructive reflections, conservative experts and leaders have contributed a fair share… Heritage Foundation legal scholar Alden Abbott, whose background includes service at the Federal Trade Commission and as a senior corporate IP counsel, has summed up the shortcomings of PTAB “patent death squads.” Abbott suggests how the Supreme Court should rule in Oil States: “The best option to fix the Patent Trial and Appeals Board is to get rid of it. There is a powerful legal case that board review violates the U.S. Constitution, and therefore is invalid.”

In mid-August, the Trump Administration announced that it would probe the alleged theft of U.S. intellectual property as aided by the Chinese federal government. One could assume that this probe might be a topic of conversation. During this conversation President Trump should ask President Xi to explain how a Communist regime is capable of having a better understanding of the importance of protecting patent rights than a nation ostensibly built on private property rights; a nation that has previously been the bastion of capitalism through the 19th and 20th centuries.

These government agencies target successful, inventive U.S. firms. They politicize their processes and disregard the exclusivity that rightfully belongs to patent owners. They take away private property from the creators and give it to favored domestic companies like Samsung and Huawei, which apparently lack the smarts to win fair and square in market-based competition or by ingenuity. It’s time that America put an end to these threats, foreign and domestic. Either you believe in property rights and free enterprise or you don’t… In essence, Chinese, South Korean and FTC officials demand the benefits produced by free markets and property rights for free from American innovators in mobile technology, who took all the risk and made investments in research and development.

There is a legitimate question to be raised, however, over whether the FAA’s registry regulations and the harsh penalties for offenders actually makes our skies any safer for American citizens. That was a question tackled by a panel at The Heritage Foundation at a moderated discussion on better approaches to U.S. drone policy… Some panelists questioned why there was a need to single out UAVs as a particularly dangerous threat to manned aircraft when it was clear that there were far greater environmental risks to aircraft. Sargent chastised the media, saying that they have “not been much of a help on this” by overstating drone risks, further noting that damage risks from large birds were far greater than drones… Taylor expanded the scope of this idea, mentioning that while a few dozen people died in recreational watercraft accidents each year, and hundreds are put into hospitals from injuries related to all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), he was not aware of any story where an American was injured by a drone.

Trade secrets are the only major type of intellectual property (IP) that is not backed by U.S. federal civil remedies to compensate owners for theft. Notably, American businesses face hundreds of billions of dollars in losses per year due to trade secret misappropriation, and the problem is worsening, as cybertheft (particularly from China) continues to grow in scale… Appropriately crafted civil trade secret legislation is no panacea, but it holds the promise of providing tangible benefits, not just to private trade secret holders, but to the overall economy. In addition to vindicating property rights and protecting individual businesses, such legislation should enhance the effectiveness of the competitive process and thereby raise economic welfare.

Leading organizations of the Conservative Movement have stepped up their game informing Congress on the philosophical reasons for opposing the Innovation Act and its Senate companion, the PATENT Act. This increased patent bill opposition is directed at Republican lawmakers, the political majority party in both houses of Congress. With House leadership deciding to postpone H.R. 9’s floor debate until at least September, the expanded conservative opposition seems to be effective.