Posts Tagged: "Capitol Hill"

Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) today introduced the Realizing Engineering, Science, and Technology Opportunities by Restoring Exclusive (RESTORE) Patent Rights Act of 2025, which would restore patent owners’ right to the rebuttable presumption that a court will issue an injunction upon a finding of patent infringement. Representatives Nathaniel Moran (R-TX) and Madeleine Dean (D-PA) also introduced a House companion bill. 

Howard Lutnick, who is President Trump’s pick to become the next Secretary of Commerce, cleared a key hurdle in the Senate on Thursday, February 13, with the Senate voting 52-45 to invoke cloture. This means Lutnick will indeed soon be confirmed by the Senate to be the next Secretary of Commerce.

Twenty years ago, Congress began hearing that the patent system needed a faster, cheaper way than district court suits to assess the validity of issued patents. In line with this goal, Congress emphasized that the new procedure was to be “an alternative to expensive district court litigation.”

The U.S. Senate held a nomination hearing to vet Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, this past week. While much of the hearing focused on issues outside of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Lutnick touched on several key points relevant to the intellectual property system.

Many articles in this forum and others have set forth lofty IP goals for the incoming Trump administration. Most of them are laudable. But there is one area that deserves more attention in terms of IP and tax policy: The United States needs to restore the ability to immediately deduct R&D expenses in the year in which they were incurred. And with all the talk of another tax bill being a top priority of the new Congress, there’s no time like the present.

Three significant bills that would alter patent law were considered by U.S. legislators in 2024: the “Promoting and Respecting Economically Vital American Innovation Leadership Act” (PREVAIL Act); the Realizing Engineering, Science, and Technology Opportunities by Restoring Exclusive Patent Rights Act (RESTORE Act);  and the “Patent Eligibility Restoration Act” (PERA). Each bill had bipartisan sponsors and was intended to benefit patent owners.

Although artificial intelligence (AI) has been around for decades in some form, the more recent Generative AI (GenAI) boom has brought it back into the limelight. With the sudden popularity and prevalence of newer systems such as ChatGPT, we have seen GenAI, and even AI more broadly, enter new industries and have new use cases seemingly daily. However, with new technological development comes regulation. This is especially so in cases of high-scale and rapid development of technology that have both a potential for positive impact and growth, alongside a potential for negative consequences of misuse—just like AI.

The debates surrounding the 2024 election focused on “hot button” issues like abortion, immigration, and transgender rights. But several important IP issues also loom over the next administration and Congress. These issues include AI-generated deepfakes, the use of copyrighted works for AI training, the patentability of AI-assisted inventions, and patent subject matter eligibility more generally. We might see President Trump and the 119th Congress tackle some or all of these issues in the next term.

In 2024, America’s legislators continued their effort to fight against the harmful impact of counterfeit products being sold to American consumers. Counterfeit sellers often detract from the revenue of American businesses, infringe upon U.S. trademark owners’ intellectual property, and threaten the safety of U.S. consumers. America’s elected officials are trying to protect their constituents, along with their businesses, via legislation intended to make it more difficult for counterfeit sellers to operate in the United States. Congress resolved to expand civil liability for e-commerce platforms offering counterfeit goods, create a task force within the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, and prohibit any executive agency, including the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), from enforcing any trademark that was stolen. This article provides highlights of legislative activities undertaken in 2024 in this regard.

The position of director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is one of the most critical positions in the U.S. government. This is especially true if a key objective is to outcompete America’s most adversarial competitors (and trading partners) such as China. That’s why the reported leading candidate for USPTO director raises so many cockles and concerns. For America to out-innovate China, the incoming Trump administration’s USPTO director must come from the same cloth as the first Trump term’s USPTO director, Andrei Iancu. That is, he or she must meet and exceed such qualifications as being a patent attorney and having sufficient years of practicing patent law. Iancu set a very high bar. His superior level of excellence and dedication leading this agency didn’t escape notice, as these letters demonstrate.

A hearing held today by the Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property featured witnesses both for and against the recently introduced Realizing Engineering, Science, and Technology Opportunities by Restoring Exclusive (RESTORE) Patent Rights Act of 2024 trading competing statistics and anecdotes about whether or not the Supreme Court’s 2006 eBay v. MercExchange decision has actually harmed patent owners.

In 2024, there were several federal bills introduced and various studies and discussion about potential copyright-related regulations and legislation, but most remain pending or forthcoming. Proposed legislation related to artificial intelligence (AI) was the most prevalent and anticipated, and will be the focus of this article, with some reference to non-AI copyright-related rulemakings and legislation.

By now, virtually all Americans, and people around the world, are no doubt aware that Donald J. Trump has been reelected as President of the United States, making him only the second person in history who will serve non-consecutive terms. President-elect Trump has been settling on nominations for his Cabinet and more, identifying former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as his nominee for Ambassador to Israel, tapping current Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Brandon Carr to become head of the agency, and most recently, nominating Howard Lutnick for Commerce Secretary, among many others.

Late last week, Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chair of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, introduced H.R. 10103, the TRIPS Waivers Act, into the U.S. House of Representatives. If enacted as drafted, this bill would require that the Judiciary Committees of both houses of Congress must receive analyses of proposed modifications to international agreements that would modify the scope or enforceability of American intellectual property (IP) rights.

During a scheduled markup hearing of three key patent bills today, Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons (D-DE) announced they would delay consideration of both the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) and the Promoting and Respecting Economically Vital American Innovation Leadership Act (PREVAIL Act), respectively. However, the Inventor Diversity for Economic Advancement (IDEA) Act of 2024 moved forward to the Senate floor.