Posts Tagged: "Senator Thom Tillis"

Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) today announced the introduction of the Patent Examination and Quality Improvement Act of 2022, which is aimed at “evaluat[ing] and improv[ing] the patent examination process and the overall quality of patents issued by the USPTO,” according to a press release. Last week, Tillis told IAM that he would be introducing legislation to reform U.S. patent eligibility law, which is still to come. The bill announced today instead focuses on providing clarity around “what constitutes patent quality, the setting of patent quality metrics, and how the quality of work product performed by patent examiners is measured within the office.”

On August 1, the U.S. Copyright Office sent a report  addressed to Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) detailing the results of the agency’s study into the feasibility of a deferred registration examination (DRE) option for copyright applicants seeking registration under U.S. law. While the Office recognized the genuine concerns of those seeking the creation of such an option, the report issued by Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter concluded that alternative approaches for addressing those issues would achieve better results than the proposed deferred examination option.

Earlier today, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary convened a brief executive business meeting to discuss a series of judicial nominees selected by the Biden Administration, as well as a pair of proposed bills. One of those bills, the Interagency Patent Coordination and Improvement Act of 2022, follows various efforts to limit certain patent rights in the pharmaceutical industry and was passed favorably out of the Committee via voice vote toward a full vote on the Senate floor.

Senator Thom Tillis yesterday wrote to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf, asking for a third time that the FDA conduct “an independent assessment and analysis of the sources and data that are being relied upon by those advocating for patent-based solutions to drug pricing.” Tillis expressed his frustration with the lack of response thus far, explaining that no formal reply has yet been received despite his first letter being sent in January 2022, and calling it “unacceptable” that the FDA apparently “refuses to reply to emails or to engage.”

Today, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property met to hear testimony from four witnesses about proposed changes to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) as outlined in the recently announced PTAB Reform Act. Subcommittee Chairman Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Ranking Member Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) introduced the bill last week. Those testifying generally agreed the bill represents compromise and, at Tillis’ prompting, on a scale of green to red, scored it a green to yellow overall.

Following a late April request by Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI)  to then newly-confirmed United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal asking her to respond to a number of questions surrounding abuse of the inter partes review (IPR) system, Vidal last week sent a letter explaining she is working on the problem. The senators’ April letter had expressed concern over Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions to institute inter partes review (IPR) proceedings in OpenSky Industries, LLC v. VLSI Technology LLC and Patent Quality Assurance, LLC v. VLSI Technology LLC. “The facts and circumstances around these proceedings suggest petitioners OpenSky Industries, LLC (OpenSky) and Patent Quality Assurance, LLC (PQA) brought the proceedings to manipulate the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for their own financial gain,” explained the letter.

On April 27, Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), both members of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, wrote to Kathi Vidal, the newly confirmed Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), to inquire as to why the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) is allowing itself to become weaponized. “We write to express our concern about the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB’s) recent decisions to institute inter partes reviews (IPRs) in OpenSky Industries, LLC v. VLSI Technology LLC and Patent Quality Assurance, LLC v. VLSI Technology LLC,” wrote Hirono and Tillis, who would go on to point out that the “facts and circumstances” suggest that the challengers “brought the proceedings to manipulate the [USPTO] for their own financial gain.”

Senators Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) sent a letter yesterday to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal to express their concern over the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions to institute inter partes review (IPR) proceedings in OpenSky Industries, LLC v. VLSI Technology LLC and Patent Quality Assurance, LLC v. VLSI Technology LLC. “The facts and circumstances around these proceedings suggest petitioners OpenSky Industries, LLC (OpenSky) and Patent Quality Assurance, LLC (PQA) brought the proceedings to manipulate the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for their own financial gain,” explains the letter.

Last night, the Chairman and the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property published an op-ed in The Hill on the important role the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) plays in the U.S. patent ecosystem, and expressed their commitment to strong patent rights as a necessity for American innovation to flourish. “In order to ensure America’s continued dominance in all areas of innovation, we must have strong patent rights,” Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) wrote. “However, for our patent rights to truly be strong, they have to be based on high-quality patents… The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) plays a critical role in this process and is a necessary backstop to invalidate truly low-quality patents that do not represent true innovation and never should have been issued.”

As part of the ongoing confirmation process for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) submitted a number of questions for the record, including 35 IP-related questions on topics ranging from patent eligibility to anti-suit injunctions and 15 antitrust questions, to which Judge Jackson recently responded. While Tillis voted against Judge Jackson’s appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Court due to concerns about her judicial philosophy, he recently indicated that she has the appropriate temperament for the Supreme Court. The Senate Judiciary Committee is voting on Jackson’s confirmation today.

The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) has agreed to perform a study requested earlier this month by Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) to explore “whether Congress should create a unified, stand-alone, and independent Intellectual Property Office.” NAPA President and CEO Teresa Gerton said its full-time research staff and Academy Fellows are well-positioned to do the work requested and that NAPA would begin discussions with the U.S. Copyright Office and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) immediately. However, Gerton expressed some skepticism, cautioning that “our success in these negotiations depends greatly on the willing participation of these two agencies and the level of funding they agree to make available for the work.”

Earlier this month, Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced the Strengthening Measures to Advance Rights Technologies (SMART) Copyright Act into the U.S. Senate. The bill is designed to address shortcomings with some of the statutory provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which have failed to incentivize the development of new technical measures for preventing copyright infringement online the way that Congress originally envisioned when passing the DMCA in 1998.

Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC), Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) sent a letter yesterday to Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo expressing their “grave concerns” with the compromise language agreed on recently in the ongoing talks to waive intellectual property rights for COVID-related technology under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. On March 15, the European Union, United States, India and South Africa announced the compromise language. The text is not final and still must get official approval from all 164 World Trade Organization (WTO) member countries.

In January of this year, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) sent a letter to Matthew Wiener, Acting Chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), and Todd Rubin, ACUS Counsel for Congressional Affairs, asking that the ACUS “conduct a study on whether Congress should create a unified, stand-alone, and independent Intellectual Property Office.” But Wiener replied to Tillis’ letter on March 7, indicating that ACUS “has neither the expertise nor resources to conduct” such a study. Instead, Wiener suggested asking an entity better positioned to undertake the task, such as the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), which Tillis wrote to today.

A bipartisan group of five U.S. senators have introduced a bill to amend Chapter 28 of Title 35 of the U.S. Code to include language that would “combat corrupt Chinese Courts from issuing ‘anti-suit injunctions,’” according to a joint press release issued by the senators today. Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC), Chris Coons (D-DE), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and Rick Scott (R-FL) introduced the bill on March 8. An anti-suit injunction is an injunction issued by a foreign court to limit the rights of parties to pursue litigation in U.S. courts.