Posts in Government

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has just cleared up the picture over its cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the company’s forecast looks sunny. The corporation recently announced its first quarter earnings for 2015 and financial pundits were flabbergasted to see just how profitable AWS has been for Amazon, earning $5.16 billion in revenue over a recent 12-month period and growing…

Yesterday the House Committee on Energy and Commerce voted to approve the Targeting Rogue and Opaque Letters (TROL) Act by a vote of 30-22. Meanwhile, the Protecting American Talent and Entrepreneurship Act (the PATENT Act) was introduced into the Senate. It is now also believed that Congressman Goodlatte may have a hearing or markup with respect to the Innovation Act at some point during the week of May 11th. However, there whispers that the Innovation Act may not be able to make it out of the House Judiciary Committee.

While Chinese President Xi is cracking down on political dissidents and solidifying his power over the army, the country has begun a huge push for innovation. While it’s easy for us to look askance at that proposition, we may be about to launch an equally quixotic experiment of our own: seeing if American innovation can survive the undermining of our patent system.

In January 2005, Focarino was promoted to Deputy Commissioner for Patent Operations, a role that made her responsible for all patent-examining functions in the eight Patent Technology Centers and all operational aspects of patent application initial examination, patent publications, and international Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications processing. Upon the resignation of Jon Dudas from the USPTO in January 2009, then Commissioner for Patents John Doll rose from his post as Commissioner for Patents to become the Acting Director of the Patent Office. At this time Focarino was promoted to Acting Commissioner for Patents. Upon Director Kappos assuming control of the Patent Office, Focarino was retained on the senior management team, with the creation of a new position — Deputy Commissioner for Patents. Subsequently, after Commissioner Bob Stoll retired, Focarino was promoted, this time being appointed Commissioner for Patents.

During a free-flowing conversation the former leaders of the Patent Office agreed on a number of items, including the biggest problem for the Patent Office over the last generation: fee diversion. Both Dickinson and Mossinghoff pointed to fee diversion as a constant and continuing challenge. Dickinson recalled one particular budget where nearly $250 million was diverted from the Patent Office budget, a huge sum given that at the time the USPTO annual budget hovered around $1 billion.

A clique of multinational corporations is pushing legislation that will be a disaster for the rest of us, especially our universities with research components. Small inventors and their patrons in academia are being asked to swallow large dosages of poison encapsulated in the bill. Two features are especially concerning: mandatory fee shifting and involuntary joinder. Together and separately, they seriously weaken and put at risk the university technology transfer process, so necessary to America’s innovative and entrepreneurial way of life.

On Monday, May 11, 2015, IPWatchdog will a co-sponsor a roundtable discussion on patent reform. This event will take place at the law offices of McDermott Will & Emery, which is located directly across the street from the U.S. Capitol. Bernie Knight, a partner with McDermott and a former General Counsel to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, will co-moderate the event along with me. We hope you can join us for this discussion.

The Innovation Act (H.R. 9) goes well beyond what is needed to address bad actions of a small number of patent holders, and instead raises costs for all legitimate patent holders to enforce their Constitutionally-given property rights in court. The perceived need for legislation to address abusive litigation practices already is being dealt with effectively by the Supreme Court, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, and the Federal Trade Commission. Any legislative action should be limited and focused on specific abusive behavior, not the overly broad approach on procedural aspects of enforcing patents as H.R. 9 does.

One area where NASA has been placing a fair amount of its research focus is in developing design features that allow for reductions in an aircraft’s weight and the amount of drag it creates. The aeronautical research agency has entered into a partnership with the Boeing Company (NYSE:BA) of Seattle, WA, to test a couple of fuel efficiency technologies on a special Boeing 757 model known as the ecoDemonstrator. One NASA project utilizing the ecoDemonstrator is the Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) project, which explores the benefits and risks of new vehicle design concepts. On the Boeing ecoDemonstrator, NASA installed a series of 31 sweeping jet actuators which are capable of on-demand manipulation of airflow over the vertical tail of an aircraft. The use of the sweeping jets would provide the stability and directional control usually supplied by the aircraft’s vertical tail, allowing manufacturers to reduce the tail’s size and the overall drag of the aircraft. A separate ERA project involving the ecoDemonstrator will test the insect repellant properties of various repellents for an Insect Accretion and Mitigation study. Even a small bug can disrupt the laminar flow of air over the leading edge of a wing, increasing drag and reducing fuel efficiency by as much as six percent. The Insect Accretion and Mitigation study will take place between April 27th and May 15th near the area of Shreveport, LA.

Through a partnership with Reed Technology and Information Services, the USPTO announces the release of the Patent Application Alert Service. This system provides customized, email alerts to the public for free when patent applications of interest are published. Additionally, the system offers direct access to the published applications that meet your search criteria.

In a unanimous vote the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the Stoll nomination, which now moves on to the full Senate. If confirmed Stoll would take the vacant spot created by the retirement of Judge Randall Rader.

It’s great that John Oliver brought the subject of patent trolls, about which IPWatchdog has already produced some considerable coverage, to an audience that topped 1.4 million viewers. But there are a significant number of stakeholders in the ongoing patent debate who are not in favor of the Innovation Act and they’re not, as John Oliver would have you believe, simply lobbyists for trial lawyers. For example, the Innovation Alliance, which is made up of innovator companies, does not support the Innovation Act. Neither do independent inventor groups, independent inventors, innovative startup companies, biotechnology companies or universities. If John Oliver is for helping small business victims of patent trolls while preserving patent rights he should actually be promoting the STRONG Patents Act and not the Innovation Act.

The Innovation Protection Act, one of the lesser known patent bills percolating in Congress over the past few years, would provide a source of permanent funding for the USPTO. The fees the USPTO collects would remain available to the USPTO until expended. This common sense idea has been floated for years, but it never seems to go anywhere. Appropriators have been unwilling to commit to allowing the USPTO to keep user fees, diverting $1 billion worth of collected fees from the USPTO according to the Intellectual Property Owners Association. This may not seem like much but is a lot of money, but for an agency the size of the USPTO it is a lot of money.

Netflix raised a lot of ire in recent weeks when it negotiated a sponsored data agreement with two Australian ISPs. Those sponsored data agreements, which ensure that a certain amount of bandwidth is devoted to Netflix customers, was accused of running afoul of the very precepts of net neutrality for which the company lobbied here at home. From an innovation standpoint, if Netflix isn’t forced to pay for the bandwidth that it takes up, Netflix has no incentive to innovate a solution to the bandwidth problem that it has created for itself.

Earlier today USPTO Director Michelle Lee handed out the latest Patents for Humanity awards at a ceremony in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus. Launched by the USPTO in February 2012 as part of an Obama administration initiative promoting game-changing innovations to solve long-standing development challenges, Patents for Humanity is a competition recognizing patent owners and licensees who address global challenges in health and standards of living.