Posts Tagged: "innovation"

The only thing that moves quicker, disseminates further, and is repeated more often than the truth is misinformation. The more misinformation is repeated, the more challenging it becomes to distinguish truth from falsehood. A groundbreaking 1977 study termed this the “illusory truth effect”. According to the study, if “people are told something often enough, they’ll believe it.”  Simply repeating a statement makes it more likely to appear to be truthful. The impact of the illusory truth effect can be particularly harmful when those responsible for setting policy are unable to differentiate fact from fiction.

Last weekend, The Federalist Society hosted a panel as part of its 2023 National Lawyers Convention featuring in-house counsel from Google and Qualcomm, as well as two federal judges and an academic, to discuss whether U.S. law around IP injunctions is promoting or harming markets for innovators and creators. Predictably, Google’s and Qualcomm’s counsel had starkly different perspectives on that topic.

On November 16, innovation intelligence firm Patsnap published the results of its 2023 Global Innovation Report, which measures a range of patent metrics to determine the most innovative companies in the world. This year’s Global Innovation 100 listing represents about a quarter of the globe’s entire patent filing activity. The report also includes a Global Disruption 50 listing of actively growing and young companies, reflecting the strength of both the United States and China in emerging technology fields.

Following a panel that examined the international landscape for standard essential patents (SEPs), IPWatchdog’s Founder and CEO, Gene Quinn, and Chief Operating Officer, Renee Quinn, presented The Honorable Randall Rader with the IPWatchdog Masters™ Hall of Fame award and a sketched portrait to add to the Wall of Fame at IPWatchdog’s headquarters. Judge Rader served as a circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit from 1990 through 2010, and as the court’s Chief Judge from 2010-2014. He has won numerous awards and now works an arbitrator, mediator and consultant with the Rader Group. In his explanation of the origins of the IPWatchdog Masters™ Hall of Fame in 2022, Quinn said he wanted an IP Hall of Fame that included only “real IP professionals; people who mean something to me, people I want you to hear from.”

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued its one millionth design patent on September 26, 2023. U.S. Patent No. D1,000,000 claims the ornamental design for a dispensing comb. This milestone comes during a particularly prolific period for design patents. In 2022 alone, the USPTO received more than 50,000 design patent applications. The Office has seen a 20% growth in design patent applications over the last five years. It is not hard to understand why inventors are seeking design patent protection at previously unseen levels. In an age of complicated technologies, design patents can protect marketable appearances of products in the same manner generally as trademarks identify source. Understanding design patent benefits underlying the recent growth in application numbers is a good lesson for businesses seeking to distinguish a brand—but keep an eye out for further developments and be prepared to adjust business and IP strategies.

The President’s recent Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence instructs the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director and Copyright Registrar to collaboratively issue recommendations to the President on further actions for advancing AI innovation through intellectual property, particularly with respect to AI inventorship and AI authorship. But the two offices currently regard AI differently in terms of assessing the creative and conceiving capabilities of machines, which poses a potential contradiction in how intellectual property law treats AI.

In today’s high-tech landscape, the ancient fable of the goose that laid the golden eggs imparts profound wisdom. The farmer in that tale weighed the decision to continue accumulating wealth slowly by selling the golden eggs that his magical goose laid (one per day) or taking a risk by killing the goose to harvest all of the gold within it at once. (Ultimately, the farmer chose the murderous path only to discover the goose did not contain any riches.) Just as the farmer faced thorny decisions in the tale, modern tech executives grapple with complex choices between immediate returns and long-term potential while also maintaining a competitive edge. In the real world, an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can generate patentable outputs (such as designs for new drugs) stands as the metaphorical “goose” while the inventions it produces are analogous to the “golden eggs.” Steadfastly guiding this delicate dance is the patent attorney with expertise in AI technology.

Words can have profound impact. The term “patent troll,” coined by an Intel litigator, has done incalculable damage. First use is attributed to Peter Detkin, who is said to have deployed it in 2001 to belittle plaintiffs in a patent case involving the chipmaker. Shortly after its appearance, Detkin emerged as what some in the tech world would consider a bad actor. He co-founded Intellectual Ventures, a company that raised $5.5 billion to acquire more than 40,000 patents and applications for sale, license or enforcement. The IP community needs to be more vigilant about preventing parties of interest and the media from controlling the IP narrative.

The world is increasingly connected, and semiconductors are essential to enabling this connectivity. Specialists project the semiconductor market to become a trillion-dollar industry by 2030 (McKinsey & Co., 2022). The term “semiconductors” covers a large amount of embedded technology that is advancing rapidly in its development. Semiconductor companies are highly innovative and rely on innovation to maintain their market share and expansion objectives. An indicator of innovation in this sector is, of course, patents. Of the 10 largest semiconductor companies, according to a ranking published by Investopedia in April 2023, five companies filed between 2,000 to 5,000 patent families between 2019 and 2022

On Thursday, October 26, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) issued a limited exclusion order (LEO) and cease and desist order against Apple, potentially barring the technology company from importing Apple Watches into the United States. The ITC found Apple violated section 337 by importing Apple Watches that infringed on two Masimo patents that covered technology related to reading blood-oxygen levels.

Startups often face many competing pressures. Two such pressures that are frequently at odds with each other are the need to adequately protect the intellectual property that will be the basis for future revenue and investment, and the need to bring such revenue and investment into the business to allow for continued technology development and commercialization. Many startups are aware of how the on-sale bar interacts with these pressures and the associated need to file patent applications on any technology prior to offering or placing it on sale. However, fewer startups are aware of the public-use bar and how activities pursued with the goal of growing their businesses may unwittingly invoke it.

On October 23, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) Office of the Chief Economist (OCE) published a report detailing patent application filing trends at the USPTO related to COVID-19 diagnostics technologies. The OCE found that filing activity surged following the arrival of the novel coronavirus in early 2020, with much of that increase driven by small companies and research institutions. The report found further evidence suggesting that federal funding had a significant impact on driving innovation into COVID-19 diagnostics at small R&D entities.

On  April 27, 2023, the European Commission published its proposal for how the licensing of standard essential patents (SEPs) should be governed in the EU. The draft regulation states that the initiative aims to incentivize participation by European firms in the standard development process and the broad implementation of such standardized technologies, particularly in IoT industries. The developments are of interest to any business that develops, implements or markets connective technologies.

I was not even aware of the issue below until a CPA friend of mine happened to mention it during a friendly telephone call. But unless Section 174 of the Internal Revenue Code is restored to its previous state from prior to the 2017 Trump tax cuts, U.S. innovation will be greatly impacted. Section 174 of the Internal Revenue Code has been around since 1954. It was enacted to eliminate uncertainty in the treatment of research and development (R&D) expenditures and to encourage businesses to carry on research and experimentation.

IPWatchdog’s Life Sciences Masters 2023 concluded today, following three days of panels that tackled some of the most pressing issues facing intellectual property professionals in the life sciences space. In the spotlight was the Biden Administration’s recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and its potential impact on future drug development in the United States. Prescription drug pricing controls are one aspect of the IRA, a landmark piece of legislation passed by Congress last August that also directs funding to be spent on clean energy projects and increased tax enforcement. The IRA authorizes the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary to establish a Drug Price Negotiation Program, codified at 42 U.S.C. § 1320f, to establish maximum fair prices of certain drugs that become eligible for the program because they constitute a large portion of expenditures by Medicare Part B and Part D patients. Pharmaceutical companies who do not agree to the price set during negotiations with HHS will have to pay a new excise tax codified at 26 U.S.C. § 5000D calculated based on daily sales and starting at 65%.