Other Barks & Bites for Friday, March 20: CAFC Approves Flexible Domestic Industry Analysis at ITC; MFN Pricing Threatens $167 Trillion in Medical Innovation’s Societal Value; and UK Has No Preferred Option for AI and Copyright

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Techson IP – Patent Pup, Sam

This week in Other Barks & Bites: the Federal Circuit okays the U.S. International Trade Commission’s flexible analysis of the technical and economic prongs of the domestic industry requirement; the University of California tops the National Academy of Inventors list of top universities obtaining U.S. utility patents last year; the EU’s highest court rules that first requests for data access under the General Data Protection Regulation may be excessive if part of a systemic pattern of entering data claims for compensation; the UK’s Technology Secretary notes that the nation has no preferred option for handing artificial intelligence and copyright issues after nixing its opt-out framework proposal; a recent economic study shows that U.S. medical innovation has contributed $167 trillion in societal value over three decades; and the Federal Trade Commission’s Director of Competition indicates that the regulatory agency will be closely monitoring behaviors in the pharmaceutical market as patents protecting blockbuster drugs expire in the coming months.

Bites

CJEU Rules That First Requests for Data Access Under GDPR Can Be Excessive – On Thursday, March 19, the Court of Justice for the European Union (CJEU) issued a ruling finding that it was possible for a first request for access to personal data collected by a controller may be deemed excessive under the terms of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) if that request is made for the sole purpose of claiming compensation under the GDPR. The CJEU’s ruling comes in a case arising from German regional courts in which family run optician company Brillen Rottler refused a request to provide personal information to an Austrian man who entered his personal information into a form for receiving a newsletter before claiming compensation under the GDPR, a practice which this individual committed systematically involving many other companies offering online newsletters.

CAFC Says Technical Prong of ITC’s Analysis Not Rigidly Confined to Article in Complaint – On Thursday, March 19, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in Apple Inc. v. U.S. International Trade Commission affirming the ITC’s determination that Apple committed a violation of Section 337 by importing Apple Watches infringing upon patent claims directed to noninvasive pulse oximetry technologies owned by Masimo Corporation. The Federal Circuit ruled against Apple’s appeal of the ITC’s domestic industry findings, ruling that Section 337 proceedings did not require that the technical prong analysis must be rigidly confined to the Masimo Watch product identified in Masimo’s complaint but could include certain prototypes developed by Masimo and practicing the patent claims, and that the ITC’s economic prong analysis could take into account non-patent practicing precursors that were developed as part of the same iterative process that led to significant features of the patent-practicing articles.

U.S. Chamber: $167 Trillion in Societal Value from Medical Innovation Threatened by MFN Pricing – On Thursday, March 19, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce published a blog post reporting findings from a recent study completed by University of Chicago economist Dr. Tomas Philipson and commissioned by the U.S. Chamber, which showed that American medical innovation has contributed $167.5 trillion in societal value based on a 30-year time horizon tracking advances in treatments for HIV, heart disease, breast cancer and obesity. The U.S. Chamber notes that this and other economic gains that have accrued over the past few decades would be threatened if the Trump Administration were successful in pursuing policies to ensure that major pharmaceutical companies are offering treatments to American patients on a most favored nation (MFN) pricing basis, which would import arbitrary foreign pricing controls into the U.S. market and limit American access to innovative treatments.

UK Has No Preferred Option After Scrapping Opt-Out Proposal for AI Training – On Wednesday, March 18, the United Kingdom’s Technology Secretary Liz Kendall made public remarks indicating that the UK’s government was no longer pursuing a proposal that would have created an opt-out framework for copyright owners who do not want their works used as training inputs by artificial intelligence (AI) developers. Although the UK government is considering other policies that would require AI outputs to be generated with labels to discourage deepfakes, Secretary Kendall noted that the UK government no longer has a preferred option for reconciling tensions that have been growing between the traditional legal protections afforded by copyright and the rapid technological progress of AI innovation.

FTC Officials Monitoring Pharmaceutical Industry As Significant Patents Expire – On Tuesday, March 17, Dan Guarnera, Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Bureau of Competition, spoke publicly at the Pharma USA 2026 conference in Philadelphia, PA, indicating that the United States’ top competition regulator would be monitoring corporate behaviors in the pharmaceutical industry to ensure that generic drugmakers are able to enter the market as a string of blockbuster patent expirations are set to impact the U.S. market. The remarks came days before Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk lost patent exclusivity for its obesity treatment semaglutide in India, where generic drugmakers are expected to release about 50 brands of semaglutide in the coming weeks.

R Street, Public Citizen Sign CAPPA Pharma Patent Reform Letter – On Monday, March 16, the Coalition Against Pharma Patent Abuse (CAPPA) announced its launch as an alliance of pharmaceutical industry stakeholders dedicated to seeking reforms to the U.S. patent system designed to eliminate the practice of generic drugmakers paying branded drugmakers for delayed market entry dates to avoid infringement liability, which CAPPA says prevents Americans from accessing affordable medicines. Among CAPPA’s recent actions include a letter addressed to the bipartisan leadership of both houses of the U.S. Congress asking federal lawmakers to reform drug patent litigation under the Hatch-Waxman Act by limiting lost-profit damages and injunctive relief as well as requiring that companies assert all relevant patent claims in one action instead of withholding certain patent claims for repetitious lawsuits.

Barks

University of California System Leads NAI’s Top Patenting Universities of 2025 – On Thursday, March 19, the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) published its list of the top universities earning U.S. utility patent grants during 2025, which showed the Regents of the University of California system in the top spot with 571 U.S. utility patent grants last year, nearly double the amount earned during the same period by second-place Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which earned 291 U.S. utility patents last year.

Copyright Office Seeks Public Comment on First Fee Schedule Adjustments Since 2020 – On Thursday, March 19, the U.S. Copyright Office announced that it would be seeking public comment on proposed changes to its fee schedule, the first amendments to the agency’s fee schedule since the last adjustment in 2020 with proposed fees published in the Federal Register on Friday designed to help the Office recover 60 percent of its costs, the rate at which the Office has historically recouped its fees.

Senator Cruz Calls for End to Section 230 – On Wednesday, March 18, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), Chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, called for a full repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act during opening remarks of a committee hearing, arguing that the statute has been abused by Big Tech companies resulting in censorship of political viewpoints.

SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Bill Passes Favorably Out of U.S. House of Representatives – On Tuesday, March 17, the full U.S. House of Representatives passed S. 3971, the Small Business Innovation and Economic Security Act, which reauthorizes both the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) federal grantmaking programs that expired at the end of last September.

Ninth Circuit Says Purposeful Direction is Proper Jurisdictional Test in Trademark Cases – On Tuesday, March 17, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an unpublished decision in Tippsy, Inc. v. Tipsy, LLC dismissing appellant Tippsy’s argument that the district court erred in finding no personal jurisdiction over the defendant and agreeing with the district court that the purposeful direction test was the proper test over purposeful availment because trademark infringement sounds in tort and not contract law.

WIPO Launches AI Infrastructure Interchange for Expert Dialogue on AI and IP Issues – On Tuesday, March 17, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) officially launched the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Interchange (AIII) at an event before 1,700 attendees at WIPO’s Geneva headquarters, establishing an initiative designed to bring rightsholders, technical developers and other stakeholders in the AI and intellectual property (IP) sectors to promote the facilitation of data access as well as enhanced forms of rights management and enforcement. 

This Week on Wall Street

Tight Chip Supplies Limit Micron Order Fulfillment Following Blockbuster Q2 Earnings – On Thursday, March 19, Micron Technology CEO Sanjay Mehrotra made public remarks on CNBC indicating that the company was only able to fulfill half to two-thirds of their customers requirements due to tight chip supply, leading to a stock dip just one day after Micron posted second quarter earnings showing that quarterly revenues reached $23.86 billion, about triple the company’s revenues from the same period last year.

Quarterly Earnings – The following firms identified among the IPO’s Top 300 Patent Recipients for 2024 are announcing quarterly earnings next week (2023 rank in parentheses):

• Monday: None
• Tuesday: Xiaomi Corp. (92nd)
• Wednesday: None
• Thursday: None
• Friday: None