Posts in Capitol Hill

The Trump Administration is trying to counter China on nearly every strategic front, from the South China Sea to the factory floor. Yet the Administration, and Congress, haven’t yet done much to address one of America’s biggest vulnerabilities—the steady decline of our once world-class system of intellectual property (IP) rights.

On Tuesday, a coalition of business organizations and policy experts led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce raised several concerns related to potential new patent fees they said would amount to “fines” on patent owners in a letter addressed to the bipartisan leadership of the Judiciary Committees for both houses of Congress. Echoing warnings from industry insiders about the inherent difficulties of patent valuation, the U.S. Chamber’s letter questions the Trump Administration’s legal authority to implement such fees and says that the valuation-based fee framework would be “administratively unworkable.”

Thank you for inviting Senator Tillis’ office to participate in this listening session. Panelists were asked to address an issue impacting drug affordability and accessibility. I appreciate the opportunity to share some thoughts. America’s robust intellectual property framework, most notably our patent system, is essential to fostering investments in pharmaceutical innovation and to ensuring accessibility of those medicines to benefit patients and society, both in the short and long terms. Concerns regarding drug affordability are important – as are the efforts to strengthen the patent system to ensure continued innovation now and well into the future.

Today, Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC), Chris Coons (D-DE), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) introduced a bipartisan bill titled “Block Bad Electronic Art and Recording Distributors Act of 2025’’(the Block BEARD Act). The proposal is aimed at blocking foreign websites dedicated to piracy from making stolen content available to U.S. users.

Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) on Monday, July 21, introduced the AI Accountability and Personal Data Protection Act, which would chiefly bar artificial intelligence (AI) companies from using copyrighted works to train their generative AI tools without authors’ permission. The bill was announced less than a week after Hawley held a hearing of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism in which he called generative AI companies’ use of copyrighted works to train their chatbots and other large language models (LLMs) “the largest IP theft in American history.”

On Wednesday, July 16, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism held a hearing titled “Too Big to Prosecute?: Examining the AI Industry’s Mass Ingestion of Copyrighted Works for AI Training.” Subcommittee Chair Josh Hawley (R-MO) called generative AI companies’ use of copyrighted works to train their chatbots and other large language models (LLMs) “the largest IP theft in American history” and rejected the suggestion that the courts should determine the path forward.

For the umpteenth time, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to take a patent eligibility case on appeal. SCOTUS denied certiorari to Audio Evolution Diagnostics v. United States et al. on June 6. The U.S. Court of Federal Claims invalidated all of AED’s patent claims, “conflating novelty and obviousness under 35 U.S.C. §§ 102 and 103 with patent eligibility under § 101,” according to Audio Evolution’s SCOTUS petition. Then the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dialed it in once again, invoking Federal Circuit Rule 36 and disposing of the appeal with summary affirmance—one word—foregoing yet another opportunity to provide parties, inventors and others guidance on where the line lies between eligibility and ineligibility.

At first glance, certain comments by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director nominee John Squires during his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing raised questions about whether he sees the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in the same way as Acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart. But on closer examination, and when viewed in context, Squires’s comments could reflect alignment not only with Acting Director Stewart, but with Congress’s objective when it passed the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) — that patent quality be vetted as early as possible, during or shortly after examination, and that later, back-end challenges only be available in limited circumstances.

As the U.S. Senate disbanded from its 24-hour “vote-a-rama” debating amendments to President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” earlier today, one major provision that would have impacted the regulation of artificial intelligence has been scrapped. The AI modernization provision of the original version of the bill would have banned state and local governments from regulating AI for 10 years if they wanted access to funds aimed at improving AI infrastructure. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) initially joined a compromise amendment with Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) that would have narrowed the scope of the provision and lowered the moratorium to five years, but later withdrew her support for that amendment and introduced her proposal to strike the provision in its entirety along with Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), which passed by a vote of 99-1.

Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) today signed onto the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2025 as co-sponsors with Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons (D-DE). PERA 2025 was introduced on May 1 in both the Senate and the House of Representatives by Tillis, Coons and Representatives Kevin Kiley (R-CA) and Scott Peters (D-CA). The bill would essentially eliminate all judicially-created exceptions to U.S. patent eligibility law and has been introduced each year since 2023.

It’s easy to talk about innovation. But true innovation is groundbreaking, disruptive and transformative. And that type of innovation, which is the kind that we say we most desperately need and want, doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Real innovation is a function of risk and reward in a very mathematical sense. The more risk, the greater the reward. But the converse is also true—the less reward, the less one will be willing to risk. And in the United States today, that innovation equation is broken and it has been for some time.

President Donald Trump’s nominee for the next Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), John Squires, was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee today by a voice vote of 20-2, with only Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) voting no. Squires’ nomination will now proceed to the Senate floor, where he is likely to be confirmed.

Over the last several years the pharmaceutical industry has come under increased pressure. While many often say the pharmaceutical industry has the most powerful lobby, the truth is many politicians have grown increasingly frustrated with what they characterize as high drug prices; or at least much higher than in virtually every other country around the world. This has led to patents being blamed, with billboards and buses in Washington, DC, wrapped with slogans like “patents kill”.

On May 28, intellectual property (IP) policy advocacy group the Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP) published the second edition of its Congressional Innovation Scorecard, a detailed assessment of Congressional engagement with legislative efforts on IP protections and related policies. Although this year’s edition highlighted a larger number of pro-IP voices in Congress, a majority of U.S. Senators and Representatives are still earning poor grades indicating a lack of engagement with issues that are critical to the future of America’s innovation economy.

H.R.1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA), passed the House on May 22, 2025. Congress.gov provides a Summary of this mammoth piece of legislation: “This bill reduces taxes, reduces or increases spending for various federal programs, increases the statutory debt limit, and otherwise addresses agencies and programs throughout the federal government. It is known as a reconciliation bill and includes legislation submitted by 11 House committees pursuant to provisions in the FY2025 congressional budget resolution (H Con. Res. 14) that directed the committees to submit legislation to the House Budget Committee that will increase or decrease the deficit and increase the statutory debt limit by specified amounts.