The Most Important Issues Facing the IP Industry | IPWatchdog Unleashed

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed we have a special episode. At the end of September we held our annual all-topics conference, which we call IPWatchdog LIVE. This conference brings together some of the top thought leaders and news makers from the entire industry, with a variety of different backgrounds and people who focus on various different niche verticals within the IP community. So, while the conference was ongoing, Eileen McDermott, our editor in chief, asked some of the industry leaders in attendance what they thought was the most important issue facing the intellectual property industry.

Judge Pauline Newman

“Technology and innovation are today the absolute foundation of the nation’s strength and leadership,” said Judge Pauline Newman, Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. “And the patent system is a powerful strength of that system.” Judge Newman went on to say: “I would look at the entire structure of the judiciary, its relationship with the administration, and particularly with the agencies that we depend on so much.”

Andrei Iancu

“What is critically important and every leader in government needs to focus on is to make sure that the IP system is stable, it’s predictable, and it’s subject to fewer fluctuations,” said Andrei Iancu, former Under Secretary of Commerce for IP and Director of the USPTO during the Trump Administration. “We need to work towards a stronger, more consistent, more predictable intellectual property system, whether it’s patents, trademarks, copyrights, or trade secrets.”

David Kappos

“The most pressing issue is the lack of appreciation of the link between strong and effective intellectual property rights and innovation outcomes,” said David Kappos, former Under Secretary of Commerce for IP and Director of the USPTO during the Obama administration. “Everybody’s for innovation. Everybody recognizes that innovation is important, that it leads to improved standards of living, healthcare outcomes, jobs, leadership, positive national defense results. But when you go that next step and try and talk about what is it that causes innovation, what is it that leads to better innovation outcomes, there’s a very poor appreciation for the fact that the answer is simple.”

Henry Hadad

“I think the most pressing issue surrounding IP policy today is that folks seem to be talking past each other,” said Henry Hadad, Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Bristol-Myers Squibb. “The more empirical data that can be put out by independent actors, the more we can focus on evidence-based policy, because too often I think the data is being put out by folks who have an agenda, and it becomes more like policy-based evidence.”

Judge Paul Michel

“The biggest problem is trust and confidence,” said Judge Paul Michel, retired Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. “So many people in the innovation sector have been losing confidence in the efficacy of the patent system, because patents are so unreliable as to validity and so difficult to enforce, and remedies are so meager, both in terms of damage amounts and the inability to get injunctions. That trust has to be restored.” Judge Michel would go on to say that long term he is optimistic, but that over the short term “it’s a disaster.”

Joseph Allen

“In our sector, the biggest issue is the march-in framework that the Biden Administration has put out, which would inappropriately allow people to petition the government if they don’t like the price of a federally funded invention in the marketplace,” said Joe Allen, who is Executive Director of the Bayh-Dole Coalition and was also the recipient of this year’s Paul Michel Award. “It would not lower prices. It would just have a devastating impact on U.S. innovation, and it undoes everything that the statute has done for 44 years… because of the bipartisan pushback, I think people in the White House now are having second thoughts about it. So, if we can just get through the rest of the year without something bad happening, I would be a very happy camper.”

Sherry Knowles

“In our area, we’re facing a really unprecedented encroachment into patent rights caused by what we consider to be an unconstitutional approach to obviousness-type double patenting, which disproportionately affects the pharmaceutical and biotech industry,” said Sherry Knowles, former Chief Patent counsel for GlaxoSmithKline, and the founder of Knowles Intellectual Property Strategies. “I have been holding the flag saying there is no authority for that doctrine. And it has a draconian effect on pharmaceutical and biotech companies.”

Phil Johnson

“I think the most pressing issue facing the U.S. IP system right now is how to restore the faith that inventors and investors have in especially early-stage inventions,” said Phil Johnson, former Senior Vice President for Intellectual Property Policy and Strategy at Johnson & Johnson, and the recipient of the Pauline Newman Award this year at LIVE. “Because of the way some of the aspects of the AIA have worked out, there is a feeling amongst individual inventors, small entities, startups, and early-stage researchers that they can no longer put their faith in the patent system. And this means that many early-stage ideas are not fundable because the startup companies, the investment capital, the risk capital is not willing to go into supporting these and developing these.”

To hear more from these thought leaders and others, including Alden Abbott, Matteo Sabattini, Judge Susan Braden, Patrick Kilbride, Hans Sauer, Brian O’Shaughnessy, Robert Stoll, James Edwards, John White and Wen Xie, listen wherever you get your podcasts (links here) or visit IPWatchdog Unleashed on Buzzsprout.