Posts Tagged: "hillary clinton"

Clinton’s tech agenda revolves around five main points that she hopes will lead to American dominance in research and development as well as overall innovation. First, she’s pledged to devote resources to educational innovations that will position U.S. workers well for the well-paying tech jobs of today and the near future. Second, she’s pushing for major infrastructure upgrades that she argues will bring broadband Internet access to a much wider audience. Her third point focuses on protecting American tech export interests to countries abroad. Her fourth agenda point discusses a framework by which concepts of the open Internet as well as personal privacy can be balanced. Finally, her fifth point hones in on the ways that technology can make government agencies more efficient and effective.

Clinton’s proposal for accomplishing this goal would be twofold: (1) to reduce excessive patent litigation through additional patent reform; and (2) strengthening the operational capacity of the USPTO by allowing the USPTO to keep and spend all the fees it collects. “You are looking at a 14-page detailed document. There is a lot of thought put behind this agenda,” explained Todd Dickinson, former Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office under President Bill Clinton who was reached by telephone for comment. Not surprisingly, Dickinson has has been an advisor to the campaign regarding intellectual property matters. “Other campaigns will be hard pressed to match the depth and thoughtfulness of these proposals.”

On the Republican side, front-runner Donald Trump, whose inability to be stopped by his own rhetoric has proven to be a hallmark of his campaign, has said himself that he is “changing” on this issue, at least where skilled talent is concerned. Trump has been on both sides of the H-1B visa issue, which makes it difficult to know what he really believes and what policy might become during a Trump Administration.

Simply stated, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) did not deserve the F foisted on him by the Engine study or amplified by the reporting by Wired and Ars Technica. Notwithstanding the inexplicable F given to Senator Cruz, the biggest error in the “report card” related to something that never happened. Senator Marco Rubio was given a B based on his vote in favor of the America Invents Act (AIA). The problem is that Senator Rubio missed that vote on the AIA and is also on record saying that had he been present he would have voted against the AIA. Indeed, there are many other inaccuracies and misleading statements that collectively left us wondering if the scoring of this “report card” intentionally misleads the public and reinforces the stereotype that the tech community only likes Democrats.

Does the Democratic Presidential contest suggest that voters think that traditional views on patents or copyrights are on the way out and that collectivism is on the rise? The so-called “Napster generation” is now definitely 30 something and kissing 40. Millennials and how they are using the Internet for work, life and politics may show us a shift in compensation for creativity that is rewarding inclusiveness, building a community and a base of customers. This contrasts with the more traditional top down, broadcast marketing coupled with enforcement of longer term royalties. Silicon Valley and Wall Street at least have embraced the former, it seems, given how much people love to value unicorns these days. But in the past as unicorns grew up the market would demand adherence to traditional top down norms – think Twitter, for example, which had few patents of their own until they purchased 900 patents from IBM shortly after going public.

Last week in Iowa Hillary Clinton promised to use patents owned by giant technology companies as leverage to get them to pay higher taxes. If you listen to the actual exchange between Clinton and a supporter Clinton agreed that patents should be suspended until companies repatriate foreign profits held in offshore accounts. A rule that tied paying taxes, or repatriation of foreign profits to the United States, to obtaining a patent would almost certainly create an extraordinary disincentive to seek a patent in the United States, which itself would lead to a nearly unimaginable parade of horribles at a time that the U.S. economy is nearly wholly reliant on innovation and technology.

Patents, intellectual property, innovation and technology policy may not decide who will become the next President of the United States, but the positions the candidates hold will greatly impact the industry, and a U.S. economy that is increasingly an innovation based digital economy.

On August 10th, the rights to sell Daraprim were bought from Impax Laboratories Inc. (NASDAQ:IPXL) of Hayward, CA, by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a privately held company with headquarters in New York City and Switzerland. Shortly after acquiring Daraprim, Turing CEO Martin Shkreli raised its price by more than 5,000 percent, from $13.50 per pill up to $750 per pill for a medication that’s not usually prescribed by itself; it’s typically part of a larger regimen for AIDS and cancer patients. As the result of public outcry, Shkreli announced several days ago that the price would drop from $750 a pill to some unspecified level. He pointed out that at $13.50 a pill the drug was not profitable to sell. Still, the damage has been done to an industry everyone loves to hate because drug prices in the U.S. are perceived to be outrageously high already.