Posts Tagged: "House Subcommittee on Courts Intellectual Property and the Internet"

For weeks now I have been asking the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to confirm how many Administrative Patent Judges (APJs) are currently employed by the Office, a request that predates the Federal Circuit’s controversial Arthrex decision, but which was renewed after the decision issued. For reasons that I cannot explain, the Office refuses to provide an answer to what seems to be a straightforward and legitimate question: How many APJs are currently employed by the USPTO? Regardless of the USPTO’s reluctance to identify the number of APJs employed, it seems safe to say that the employment rights and futures of several hundred APJs hang in the balance as the result of the Federal Circuit’s decision in Arthrex, which found that the hiring of APJs violated the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The Federal Circuit did, however, attempt to provide a gift to the Office by rewriting the section of the America Invents Act (AIA) they found to create the problem, and by so doing turned APJs into inferior officers. In order to do so, the Federal Circuit turned those uncertain number of APJs into employees-at-will, which allows for them to be fired by the Director of the USPTO. This is significant because certain APJs have not been willing to get on board with changes implemented by Director Iancu. The belief of those APJs who have not been “team players” is that they are judges and are not controlled by and do not answer to Director Iancu. Well, with the Federal Circuit’s decision in Arthrex that employment dynamic changed overnight.

This week on Capitol Hill, the House IP Subcommittee convenes its first hearing of the 116th Congress to discuss a recent report from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on female inventors, and various other House subcommittees will convene hearings to discuss 2020 budget requests for the National Science Foundation, NASA and the Department of Defense. In the Senate, there are hearings scheduled to look at government oversight of electronic health records as well as cybersecurity issues related to small businesses. In the middle of the week, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation will host events that will explore proactive strikes by companies against cyber attackers, as well as how immigration issues are affecting STEM fields. The week closes out with a Brookings Institution event looking at consumer data privacy issues and policy reactions from around the world.