Posts Tagged: "President Biden"

As predicted by IPWatchdog, Kathi Vidal has now been officially nominated by President Joe Biden as the next Under Secretary for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office at the Department of Commerce. Vidal is one of five nominations announced today. She would replace Drew Hirshfeld, who has been serving under the title, Performing the Duties and Functions of the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

President Joe Biden this week nominated Christopher Wilson to be Chief Innovation and Intellectual Property Negotiator at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). The position has not been filled since its creation in 2015. Wilson has been with the USTR for two decades, serving as Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Innovation and Intellectual Property (2006-2008) and several Assistant U.S. Trade Representative positions. He currently serves as Assistant U.S. Trade Representative, South and Central Asia.

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the nation’s patent court, is at a crossroad. Today, unlike in earlier decades, nearly all its cases are patent-related, yet, to my eye, barely half its members can be considered lifetime patent lawyers. And although any diligent lawyer can learn “black letter” patent law on the job (as I myself did), that is no longer sufficient, because judges also need a deep understanding of how inventors and investors, including corporate CEOs, rely on patents in making difficult and fateful decisions about whether to fund new R&D and manufacture new products, or not. Such decision-makers crave predictability of outcome and stability of legal requirements. Because uncertainty generates excess risk, when in doubt, they usually opt against going forward…. To me, this all suggests that the nominee to fill the vacancy on the CAFC expected in May should be a seasoned patent litigator.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) Judge Evan J. Wallach announced earlier this week that he will retire from active service and assume senior status as of May 31, 2021, after 10 years of service with the court. This leaves an opening on the CAFC for President Biden to fill. Given the many important IP issues that have been playing out at the CAFC in recent years—patent eligibility law, Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) discretionary denials, and the constitutionality of PTAB administrative patent judges, to name a few—the IP community clearly has a big stake in choosing the right candidate.

Yesterday, Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX-24) sent a letter to President Joe Biden explaining her concerns over recent reports that the leading candidate for the top antitrust post at the Department of Justice (DOJ) is likely to go to long time Democrat antitrust official Renata Hesse, who served in the DOJ Antitrust Division during the Obama Administration as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General and as Acting Assistant Attorney General. Hesse, who has gone in and out of government, has represented both Google and Amazon, companies that are facing antitrust scrutiny from the DOJ, European Union and dozens of state Attorneys General.