Posts in Capitol Hill

The full Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday unanimously advanced the “Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe Act of 2026” (NO FAKES Act), which would create a federal IP right to an individual’s voice and likeness. The Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to report the bill to the full Senate today. Senator Coons said in his remarks on the bill that with the capabilities of current and future AI technology, a personal right to control one’s voice and likeness is imperative.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee held a hearing today during which they debated and ultimately advanced two bills targeting brand pharmaceutical companies. Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-LA) led the hearing, urging fellow Republicans not to be fooled by what he called the “hostage taking theatrics” of Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT). Sanders, the Committee’s Ranking Member, introduced nine amendments to the “Ensuring Timely Access to Generics Act,” which was ultimately not voted on.

Tomorrow, June 17, the Senate HELP Committee will vote on a raft of bills aimed at making medical care more affordable. That’s a worthy goal. But in the case of the Medication Affordability and Patent Integrity Act, lawmakers are setting themselves—and patients and the rest of us—up for failure. The legislation seeks to prevent drug companies from gaming the patent system by holding these firms to new disclosure and certification requirements. How the bill is supposed to save patients money is far from obvious. What is more, there are already laws against the kind of abuse the legislation targets. And there is little to suggest those rules aren’t working.

Many of us have spent our careers defending and promoting our patent system and related policies like the Bayh-Dole Act, which injected the authorities and incentives of patent ownership into the federal R&D system so that resulting discoveries would no longer waste away on the shelves, benefitting no one. While we usually focus on statistics, legal analysis and case studies, sometimes the impact of what we’re doing hits you square in the face. Last week, I was fortunate enough to have that happen and it’s an experience I’ll never forget.

U.S. House Republicans recently introduced legislation that would prohibit entities on federal national security watchlists from receiving or enforcing U.S. patents. The Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP) responded with a statement urging Congress to reconsider the bill. The legislation would prohibit the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) from issuing patents to individuals or entities identified as Chinese military-affiliated organizations.

IPWatchdog’s 2026 Patent Masters Program kicked off Monday with discussions on the state of the international patent landscape and the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in creating efficiency gains in patent prosecution and portfolio building, before moving into conversations on Tuesday and Wednesday about monetization, ex parte appeal strategies and how to shape the future of the U.S patent system, among other topics.

At approximately the same moment that the U.S. Supreme Court handed down today’s landmark ruling in Hikma v. Amarin, the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet began a hearing on balancing medical innovation and access to generic drugs. Much of the hearing’s discussion was focused on proposed patent bills that favor generic drug makers–though whether they would ensure that Americans actually pay less for any drug, branded or otherwise, remains unclear.

America’s $150 billion per year private sector investment in biopharmaceutical research and development (R&D) does more than offer comfort. Increasingly, American innovators are curing or effectively eliminating the medical threat from many diseases and conditions. Witness, cures for Hepatitis C, GLP-1s for weight loss, COVID-19 vaccines, and HIV prevention at virtually 100% effectiveness, alongside stem cell therapies, gene editing, and CAR-T therapies for previously untreatable cancers. For those suffering from rare or untreatable disease, as well as chronic conditions, this is an era of unprecedented hope.

Peter-Anthony Pappas, Director of Intellectual Property Policy for the U.S. Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, has been nominated by President Donald Trump to be a Member of the United States International Trade Commission for the remainder of the term expiring June 16, 2026, followed by a term expiring June 16, 2035. Pappas serves as Director of Intellectual Property Policy for the Senate Judiciary Committee under Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), who is presently the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property (IP) but will be retiring after this year

During a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property hearing on the Oversight of the U.S. Copyright Office on Tuesday, the intersection of copyright law, artificial intelligence, and executive branch interference were the key focuses. Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter provided critical updates on the Copyright Office’s modernization efforts. However, the hearing was punctuated by sharp rebukes from Democratic senators regarding former President Donald Trump’s recent attempts to assert executive control over the legislative branch agency.

On Tuesday, May 5, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director John Squires pressing him to answer questions about the Office’s role in filing a trademark application on behalf of the Trump Administration for Trump’s “Board of Peace.”

China was not the only actor being scrutinized today during a full Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, titled “Stealth Stealing: China’s Ongoing Theft of U.S. Innovation.”  Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) stood in for Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) as Chair and opened the hearing with a warning that, in addition to its blatant IP theft—which is estimated to cost the United States between $400 billion and $600 billion per year—China is more recently evolving from “imitator to innovator.” “The United States must overcome its historic and ideological views that China is unable to innovate,” Tillis said.

Intellectual property (IP) protections don’t merely shield Americans’ ideas and designs from theft—they underpin our entire economy and standard of living. Approximately 90% of the market value of the S&P 500 is in intangible assets, based on IP. Weakened IP protections erode American prosperity and human potential as IP-intensive industries support 63 million U.S. jobs and account for over 40% of America’s economic output.

Today, the Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP) published the third edition of its Congressional Innovation Scorecard, which provides a measure of each lawmaker in the U.S. Congress in terms of their impact on the nation’s intellectual property (IP) system. Although this year’s scorecard acknowledges higher numbers of pro-copyright bills introduced into Congress, it concludes that members of Congress are still failing to engage fully and effectively on national IP issues to the detriment of America’s future as an innovation leader.