Posts Tagged: "Trump Administration"

Several weeks ago Internet Association President Michael Beckerman sent a letter to President Elect Donald Trump and the Trump Transition Team. The Internet Association is made up of companies that are by and large openly hostile to the U.S. patent system and innovators. The letter touched upon issues ranging from copyright safe harbors under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to recommended reforms to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to open access to the Internet and, of course, patent reform. I will confine my comments (see below) to the Internet Association’s patent reform commentary… Not that it should come as any surprise to anyone who follows the patent reform debate, but what the Internet Association says here is a lie.

Now that Trump has won, the discussion has narrowed to whether Trump will keep patents weak or make patents great again. From the outside perspective, it is a curious exercise to say the least… Why are we even asking these questions? Property is property, right? Can you remember an election where people were asking if their deed would keep squatters out of their living room depending on who won the presidency? I don’t. It seems a preposterous question. After all, the deed on your house is a property right and everybody knows the government will back it up and eject the squatters. So why then do we, or should we, have to ask whether a Trump Administration will be in favor of strong patent rights? It all seems bizarre to say the least.

Although the tech industry is big in America, the industry itself was not big on the idea of a Trump presidency. Trump, however, did have one very vocal supporter from the tech community: German-American entrepreneur, billionaire venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel… There are inklings that the patent troll narrative might actually have sway with Thiel, despite his Silicon Valley outsider status. An article published in September 2014 by Bloomberg pertaining to a corporate restructuring of Intellectual Ventures (IV), a Patent Assertion Entity (PAE) often portrayed in the media as a patent troll, provides some clues. Thiel is quoted as saying: “I think IV is basically a parasitic tax on the tech industry.”

By outsourcing manufacturing to the lowest bidder abroad not only have we destroyed the working middle class in America, but also we are also increasingly turning over our last economic advantage – our intellectual property… While there is nothing wrong with negotiating better, smarter trade deals, what America really needs is smarter manufacturing policies. After all, what exactly are better, smarter negotiators going to do if the United States remains an inhospitable climate for business, with extraordinarily high tax rates, unreasonable environmental regulations and loopholes that only the richest corporations can take advantage of? How could we ever reclaim widespread manufacturing in the United States if the deck is stacked against the industry?

Congressman Pence worked mostly on patent reform bills via the Republican Study Committee, a well-known group of House Republicans focused on inserting conservative views into public policy including respect for the Constitution and private property rights… During the time Pence served as Governor of Indiana, Purdue University soared to a record numbers of new patents, record numbers of technology licenses and record numbers of start ups based on Purdue University innovations… In July, Governor Pence signed an Executive Order establishing the Indiana Economic Development Corporation as the entity that will coordinate all efforts on behalf of the State of Indiana to accelerate innovation and entrepreneurship. Perhaps most interesting, the Order specifically acknowledges that increased innovation helps make communities more vibrant and spurs economic growth, higher wages and job creation.