Posts Tagged: "Trump Administration"

The Trump Administration’s Return on Investment (ROI) Initiative, which is geared toward increasing the American taxpayer’s benefits from federally-supported R&D, is potentially a big step forward. The draft recommendations were contained in a “Green Paper” open for public comment until January 9, 2019. The paper acknowledges the importance of a strong, dependable patent system and lauds the Bayh-Dole Act as the cornerstone of the U.S. technology transfer system, which leads the world in turning federally-funded inventions into new products, companies, jobs and even entirely new industries. Review of the 122-page paper confirms its overall value but also reveals some concerns.

A joint hearing of the House Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and the House Subcommittee on Space was recently convened to discuss the responsibilities of various U.S. government agencies on space situational awareness (SSA) and space traffic management (STM) efforts. The hearing occurred just days after the administration of President Donald J. Trump issued Space Policy Directive-3 (SPD-3) to set a new national space policy to address issues related to both SSA and STM including tracking the existence of space debris, encourage commercial activities in space and improve the national security of the United States in a world where foreign powers are increasing their presence in space.

Director Iancu is knowingly and intentionally seeking to provide hope in the words he speaks because he believes a strong patent system is necessary for the U.S. economy to flourish. In part one of our interview we also discussed the need for transparency, and the troubling Freedom of Information Act processes employed by the Office that seem hopelessly broken. We discussed the posts grant challenge process, the PTAB, experience level of the Administrative Patent Judges on the PTAB and inter partes review.

While Jack Johnson is most well known as a the first African-American to be heavyweight boxing champion, he was also an inventor and entrepreneur. The crime Johnson was convicted of was transporting a white woman across state lines for an immoral purpose. Johnson was married three times, each time to a white woman.

Increasingly, Delrahim’s speeches are moving past where he began in his USC speech in November 2017, discussing this being the appropriate time to now have a discussion about the proper role antitrust enforcement plays with respect to standard setting, to his LeadershIP April 2018 speech where he explained the Antitrust Division will not hesitate to enforce against collusive anticompetitive conduct detrimental to patent owners. Furthermore, Delrahim has now several times discussed his view that in a free market, competition based economy the remedy for patent owners violating obligations to SSOs is a contractual remedy, not an antitrust remedy.

In 1790, the U.S. patent laws were first enacted and individuals could obtain a patent under the new federal government. For about a century beforehand, British citizens in the various parts of the American colonies could obtain patents for that region, and Britain and other European countries had patent laws as well. But the new American patent system was different: it was democratized in that anyone could participate, without the need for consent from the Crown. The origins of patent laws date back to the Fifteenth Century when Florentine regents sought to attract and keep innovators and their inventions. Elizabeth I was a keen ruler in passing various patent laws to encourage foreigners with ideas and inventions to relocate to Britain, as well as encourage domestic innovation.

It is no surprise to anyone that patent rights in the United States suffered enormously under the two terms served in the White House by President Barack Obama. That the Obama White House was uncomfortably close with Google is widely known, and Google has been the face and driving force of the lobby that supports weakening patent rights in America. What is far less clear, and extremely difficult to explain or understand, is why the Department of Justice continues to make arguments against patents. Indeed, in the DOJ brief filed in Oil States v. Greene’s Energy, the Solicitor General argues repeatedly throughout the brief that patents are not private property, but rather are a public right… At the very beginning of the brief filed by the DOJ in Oil States, in the Summary of the Argument, the DOJ stakes its claim and beings by arguing that patents are a public right (not private property) that is akin to a government-conferred franchise.

A group of 16 leaders from politically conservative institutions sent a letter addressed to President Donald Trump lauding the Trump Administration’s decision last summer to initiate an investigation into Chinese trade practices regarding intellectual property. The investigation, authorized under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, was aimed at identifying instances where U.S. technologies have been forcibly transferred to Chinese entities as a cost of entering the Chinese domestic market as a foreign entity… The recent letter to President Trump from conservative leaders is the latest indication that right-leaning institutions and think tanks have been more engaged with the debate surrounding the current U.S. intellectual property system.

In mid-August, the Trump Administration announced that it would probe the alleged theft of U.S. intellectual property as aided by the Chinese federal government. One could assume that this probe might be a topic of conversation. During this conversation President Trump should ask President Xi to explain how a Communist regime is capable of having a better understanding of the importance of protecting patent rights than a nation ostensibly built on private property rights; a nation that has previously been the bastion of capitalism through the 19th and 20th centuries.

The U.S. patent promise of exclusivity has become nothing more than lip service with no credibility for more than half a century. A patent system maintained by offering lip service must fail over time. The American inventor population is vanishing rapidly as a result of the changed laws and anti-patent movement. If the patent reward fails, both those who are inventors and those who would be inventors will be influenced not to pursue innovating and society will see an era of slow progress. Bad policy advice has misled Congress into belief that inventing without the participation of inventors will be fine. Reality will soon prove it was a fatal mistake that the U.S. should not have made.

As President Trump embarks on the renegotiation of NAFTA, it is critical that we seize the opportunity to make it the gold standard in intellectual property rights protections… The stakes are tremendous and cannot be ignored.  In total, it is estimated that intellectual-property theft costs the United States approximately $600 billion per year.  A recent New York Times article notes that this is the “greatest transfer of wealth in history”.

A Couple of weeks ago, the Trump administration formally launched a “Section 301” investigation into the “theft of intellectual property” by China.  According to US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, the investigation will “look into Chinese laws, policies, and practices which may be harming American intellectual property rights…”  China is a large market for many American companies, not only for production, but also sales.  Chinese laws and policies with regard to trademarks may be confusing to many, but there are some key concepts to know and consider regarding trademarks in China.

“I can tell you that my work in China and Japan and Korea tells me that the companies there are quite delighted to pick up the slack where American companies don’t have quite the protections that they do under their law,” Judge Vader said.  These concerns about American companies not being able to compete with Asian companies echoed the message that Donald Trump frequently expressed during the presidential campaign. During the interview, Judge Rader also mentioned “a really excellent paper from a Hoover scholar and it said they had never found an instance of a strong, growing economy that didn’t correlate with a strong protective patent system.”

There are clearly many thousands of companies both large and small with far greater experience and in a far better position to advise Congress on the issue of patent reform. So why Mapbox? As is so frequently the case whenever business and politics intersect, follow the money! We have done just that and we’ve found that a no-name, no-experience company like Mapbox, without any patent applications and no patent litigation experience became thrust into the public debate over patents because all the money people behind Mapbox are card carrying members of the anti-patent efficient infringer lobby.