Posts Tagged: "government accountability office"

The House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet today held Part II in a series of hearings to consider reforms to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) 10 years after it was created by the America Invents Act (AIA). The hearing, titled “The Patent Trial and Appeal Board After 10 Years, Part II: Implications of Adjudicating in an Agency Setting,” coincided with the release of a preliminary report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) that was commissioned in June of last year by IP Subcommittee Chair Hank Johnson (D-GA) and Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) to investigate PTAB decision-making practices. The GAO’s preliminary findings revealed that “the majority of [administrative patent] judges (75 percent) surveyed by GAO responded that the oversight practiced by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) directors and PTAB management has affected their independence, with nearly a quarter citing a large effect on independence.”

How many people or organizations could undergo an exhaustive investigation into everything they’ve done over the past 30 years and emerge unscathed? That’s what just happened to the technology transfer operations at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), with the spotlight primarily focused on the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Of course, an exercise like this has to find something, so the report that resulted from this exercise is titled “NIH Should Publicly Report More Information about the Licensing of Its Intellectual Property”. After extensive digging, all it uncovered are some pretty small potatoes.

This week in Capitol Hill hearings focuses solely on meetings happening at the U.S. Senate. The one hearing scheduled at the U.S. House of Representatives, which was to explore whether the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was addressing small business concerns regarding 21st century telecom systems, has been postponed to a later date. In the Senate, the Commerce Committee will hold hearings on automated system for rail vehicles and challenges in the creation of rural infrastructure for broadband Internet. The Indian Affairs Committee is also exploring broadband challenges and the Superfund Subcommittee will discuss the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) implementation of science transparency rules.

On the morning of Tuesday, June 26th, both the House Subcommittee on Research and Technology and the House Subcommittee on Energy held a hearing titled Artificial Intelligence – With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. The day’s discussion centered on issues surrounding the nascent technological field of artificial intelligence (AI), including both the potential negative and positive impacts that improved AI technologies could pose to the U.S. workforce and society in general… The specter of increased Chinese investment into AI tech development was also discussed during the day’s hearing. During his opening remarks, Congressman Randy Weber (R-TX), chair of the House Energy Subcommittee, spoke to the concerns over increased tech investment by China into AI programs and how that threatens U.S. dominance in the field.

It’s not just counterfeits of gadgets or luxury fashion items available for sale on Amazon, lining the already deep pockets of Bezos. As we’ve noted in other reports, there are plenty of counterfeit items that mimic badges and official documents from law enforcement agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Secret Service. But a recent letter sent by the Federal Communications Commission in late May of this year indicates that Amazon is also allowing the sale of set-top boxes which falsely use FCC logos in the branding, indicating that the device is permitted by FCC regulation when in fact it is not.

Interestingly, in the history of the entire CBM program, only three petitions have ended with final written decisions upholding all claims as valid. That’s 1 percent of all CBM petitions ultimately resulting in a final decision in favor of the patent owner… If Congress enacts legislation to mix the CBM program with IPRs and PGRs, which Rep. Issa seemed to contemplate during the hearing, then you just get the worst of both worlds: an environment in which any person could challenge any patent on the widest number of statutory grounds, and it all happens outside of the federal judiciary without a jury trial.

the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that it, along with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), had seized a record number of counterfeit and pirated products which violated intellectual property rights last year. Collectively, CBP and ICE seized a total of 34,143 shipments of goods during 2017’s fiscal year, an increase of 8 percent over the total number of counterfeit shipments seized during 2016. About 90 percent of the shipments seized were in the express carrier and international mail environments. According to the law enforcement agencies, the total estimated manufacturers’ suggested retail price (MSRP) for the genuine versions of those good reached $1.2 billion.

More importantly, the OIG’s report misses the point. Nearly everyone agrees that the quality of patents being issued is a problem, but the OIG didn’t consider patent quality at all. The OIG’s proposed solution of forcing examiners to produce more quickly is hardly a recipe for quality, particularly when examiners report that they don’t currently have enough time to do a thorough job. In contrast, the Government Accountability Office recently issued two reports on improving patent quality. The GAO looked at internal procedures and surveyed examiners in order to identify some of the real causes of poor patent quality. The GAO had a number of important recommendations for improving patent quality; the distraction of this “fraud” may mean that we waste a real opportunity to make some positive changes.

The day’s most withering criticisms, however, came from the House science committee’s ranking Republican, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). Smith contended that NOAA’s problems had been debated by the committee for years and focused on the delays and rising costs of the current JPSS program. “Congress should not continue to fund an over-budgeted program that has not performed to standards,” he said. He added that he wasn’t convinced that the NOAA is adequately addressing weather data gap risks and said they were “dragging their feet” on considering options. “If NOAA’s afraid of innovation, maybe they shouldn’t be in the business of deciding what technologies are needed to improve forecasting,” Smith said.

American business interests could be adrift at sea after the European Court of Justice invalidated the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor agreement, which governs the transfer of data from European citizens to data centers outside of Europe. Meanwhile, the high tech world of Silicon Valley is getting a new, well-heeled neighbor when Japanese automaker Toyota Motors Corp. (NYSE:TM) realizes its plans of establishing a new five-year corporate venture focused on developing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Google is also undertaking the push to develop its own processing chips in an effort to stem fragmentation of Android device development.