NEWS/OPINION
“To be able to retain the fruits of one’s labor; to be able to see one’s work made permanent; to be able to bequeath one’s property to one’s posterity; to be able to rise from the natural condition of grinding poverty to the security of enduring accomplishment; to have something that is really one’s own — these are advantages difficult to deny.”
— Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence
THE ECONOMIC STANDARD
No Quiet Title for Innovators
Quiet title is essential to property rights—whether you’re talking about land where the Environmental Protection Agency asserts unconstitutionally broad “navigable waters” regulations or by unfair eminent domain without just compensation, financial assets unduly taxed (again) at death or taken without due process through civil asset forfeiture.
REAL CLEAR POLICY
Handing China Innovation Leadership
The EC has proposed a regulatory framework that will hamper standard-essential patents. If you get the sense this is a regulatory train wreck, you’re right. It will harm American and European innovators and help Chinese competitiveness and innovation.
THE ECONOMIC STANDARD
World IP Day Points to IP’s Role in Competitiveness
The United States leads all nations for strength on copyrights. The United States ties for 1st place in both the trademark and IP enforcement categories, ties six other nations for 2nd place in IP systemic efficiency, places 3rd on IP commercialization and lands in a 10-way 1st place tie for international treaties that protect IP.
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Weakening U.S. Trade Protections Benefits China
Indeed, the “patent troll” is the monstrous and largely imagined opponent against which these firms have waged an anti-patent war for nearly two decades. The infringers’ lobby wants people to believe that the “trolls” are gaming the ITC, “twisting the Commission’s rules” to “extort legitimate businesses” that import products they manufacture overseas.
THE ECONOMIC STANDARD
SERA Smiles on Users, Frowns on Innovators
If you’re in the business of inventing cutting-edge technologies and participating in standards-development bodies—both activities requiring healthy investments of financial and human resources—then SERA compels you into a deal you cannot refuse. Your only option, if you want to get paid by those whose products need your standard-essential patented invention, is the SERA court.
THE ECONOMIC STANDARD
IRA Sows Seeds of Socialistic Health Policy
Several instances of biopharma innovators cutting back or ending promising new drug projects have already occurred. A recent industry survey about the IRA’s adverse effects provides strong evidence that these aren’t merely a few anecdotal moves.
THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY
Impact on Inventors of SCOTUS Cert Denial in Centripetal Networks v. Cisco
On December 2, the U.S. Supreme Court declined a certiorari petition in Centripetal Networks Inc. v. Cisco Systems Inc. SCOTUS leaves the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s ruling—vacating the federal district court decision that Cisco had willfully infringed Centripetal Networks’s patents and owed damages exceeding $3 billion—in place. Patent owners may fear that this outcome places another hurdle between them and recovering patent infringement damages against established corporations.
IP WATCHDOG
SCOTUS Reviews Centripetal Cert
The U.S. Supreme Court considers whether to grant certiorari in Centripetal Networks v. Cisco Systems. This patent infringement case swerved into issues of judicial recusal. It has significant consequences for patent owners and inventors targeted by patent infringement, who assert their patent rights and get pulled into a litigation vortex.
THE ECONOMIC STANDARD
IRA’s False Promises, Real Results
Newly enacted government price controls aren’t even implemented yet, but they’re already having an effect. But instead of forcing down the prices of the highest priced (i.e., most valuable) brand medicines, price controls in the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” are reducing biomedical innovation.
TOWNHALL
RAIA's Gift to Big Tech and China
If you set out to give a gift to Big Tech and the Infringer Lobby, worsen the Administrative State and advantage innovation adversaries like China, it would take some doing to check all these boxes more fully than S. 2891, the “Restoring the America Invents Act.”
ECONOMIC STANDARD
The Patent Eligibility "Quagmire"
A federal judge calls the status of patent-eligible subject matter “validity goulash.” A former chief judge of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals calls it “a quagmire.” The patent eligibility mess is one of the most urgent crises in patent law and policy.
ECONOMIC STANDARD
How to Retain U.S. R&D Lead on China
Proposals in Congress would bar U.S. companies from licensing chips to Chinese end-user device companies and restrict U.S. R&D firms from involvement in global standards-development organizations where China’s state-run companies also participate. Intended to cripple China’s strategic microchip gains, they would actually cripple U.S. leadership in the most critical part of the chip space.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
When Will the Doctors Step Up?
Joel Zinberg’s op-ed “Covid Patients Suffer as Bureaucrats Try to Practice Medicine” (Feb. 8) highlights a sad, avoidable contrast between the Biden administration’s red-tape approach and the property rights-centric, market-based success of Operation Warp Speed.
REAL CLEAR MARKETS
Gov't. Regulation Can't Secure U.S. Supply Chain
H.R. 4521, the House-passed America COMPETES Act, sets up a Mother-May-I gatekeeper that will stifle U.S. innovation and competitiveness. Empowering unelected officials to decide whether American companies can invest overseas won't stop China, but it will damage America's economy and plunge us into a vicious retaliatory cycle with other nations.
A proposal stacking the antitrust deck against standards-essential patents and tilting antitrust enforcement against inventors with SEPs faced broad, bipartisan opposition. A big reason was the dangerous implications for national security.
You’d expect conservatives to approach reining in Big Tech consistent with free enterprise, property rights and innovation principles. Better to strengthen IP than to weaponize antitrust.
THE HILL
Supreme Court Ruling Is a Win for Property Rights
The U.S. Supreme Court took a major step in upholding these fundamental rights by striking down the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) latest eviction moratorium extension.
REAL CLEAR MARKETS
Biden's Competition Order Worse Than Illness
President Biden made a big deal in the rollout of his executive order on market consolidation about the price of prescription drugs. The order weaponizes antitrust and damages the patent system. That’s not strong medicine. It’s deadly poison.
IP WATCHDOG
An Evidence-Based Look at ‘Patent Quality’
“'Patent troll' scaremongering and that narrative’s flimsy evidentiary basis are alive and well and back in use with a vengeance by those who don’t respect patents. But conservative thought leaders are giving an evidence-based perspective on the necessity of reliable patents, meaningful patent rights and how our patent system suffers from 'reforms.'”
WASHINGTON TIMES
Supreme Court Gives China Innovation Advantage
"In Supreme Court session postmortems, don’t expect mention of any change in course from the vast injury it’s inflicted over the past dozen years on patent eligibility. Why does this matter? Because the high court has done as much or more than anything to give China an advantage in innovation and industrial competitiveness over the U.S."
REAL CLEAR MARKETS
Biden Hits Property Rights to Boost Competition
"President Biden’s executive order, 'Promoting Competition in the American Economy,' purports to promote competition. Let’s just say the order presumes a whole lot. Its false presumptions lead to policies that weaponize a blunt instrument: antitrust."
REAL CLEAR POLICY
China's Patent Gain is Our Loss
"China has ramped up a multipronged, whole-of-society strategy to beat America and the West. This goes well beyond mere copying and IP theft. Other prongs include subsidies for Chinese companies, predatory pricing, import restrictions, a biased regulatory regime and economic espionage."
INSIDE SOURCES
Envious Countries Pushing IP Shakedown at WTO
The WTO ploy seeks to waive 1994 Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement obligations to protect intellectual property for any inventions related to COVID-19. If successful, the foreign expropriation of U.S. companies’ intellectual property wouldn't be limited to biomedical innovation and would reduce innovation.
REAL CLEAR POLICY
Don't Impose Foreign Price Controls on Prescriptions
Biotech, pharmaceutical, and medical provider organizations have sued the Trump administration over an overreaching rule, called "Most Favored Nation," that imports foreign government-run medical systems’ price controls as a gambit to lower prescription drug prices. MFN won't.