Digital Discourse / Policy

Chairman Goodlatte and Industry Leaders to Address Legislative Solutions to Patent Troll Abuse

May 24, 2013 By

SIIA will host the House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) for the first event in its new Tech Policy Speaker Series in Washington, DC. The timely discussion will focus on the growing need for legislative action that addresses abusive patent litigation.  Chairman Goodlatte will discuss his new discussion draft patent reform legislation (publicly released on May 23) along with his perspective on the problem of patent trolls and their impact on the U.S. economy.

The event will also feature a panel discussion with Aaron Cooper, Senator Leahy’s Senior Counsel for Intellectual Property and Antitrust on the Senate Judiciary Committee, along with experts from SAS, Oracle, the National Retail Federation and Public Knowledge.

It is estimated that abusive patent litigation has cost the U.S. economy $500 billion over the last 20 years, and the annual costs of these patent assertions has increased 500 percent since 2005 to more than $29 billion each year. SIIA, the principal association representing the software and digital content industries, has been playing an active role in seeking legislative solutions to this growing problem.

SIIA Tech Policy Speaker Series: Chairman Goodlatte on Legislative Solutions to Patent Troll Abuse

Time: Wednesday, June 4; 12:00 to 1:30 pm

Location: Rayburn House Office Building Room 2226

Schedule:

12:00 pm              Introduction by SIIA President Ken Wasch
12:05-12:30         Remarks and Q&A with Chairman Goodlatte
12:30-1:30 pm    Panel Discussion with:

  • Aaron Cooper, Senior Counsel for Intellectual Property and Antitrust to Senator Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee
  • John Boswell, Senior VP, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary for SAS
  • Charles Duan, Patent Reform Project Director, Public Knowledge
  • Mallory Duncan, Senior VP, General Counsel for the National Retail Federation
  • Jason Mahler, VP, Government Affairs for Oracle (Moderator)

RSVP for the free event.

Keith Kupferschmid is General Counsel and SVP, Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement at SIIA.

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Filed Under: Policy, Policy - Intellectual Property

SIIA Welcomes Increased Congressional Focus on Patent Trolls; Applauds Sen. Cornyn’s Bill Introduced Today

May 22, 2013 By

SIIA today commended Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) for introducing The Patent Abuse Reduction Act, and for his leadership on efforts to curtail patent troll activity. The bill, which is one of a growing number of legislative efforts aimed at attacking the problem of abusive patent litigation, calls for several steps that SIIA supports, including: a heightened pleading requirement for plaintiffs; increased transparency for determining the parties that are actually behind a lawsuit, and; requirements that parties pay for any discovery that is beyond “core” materials.

The economic harm being caused by patent trolls is receiving increased attention in Congress, and we commend Senator Cornyn for his leadership on this issue.  We applaud his introduction of strong thoughtful legislation that would implement several needed patent litigation reforms. It is a crucial step toward an effective legislative response to the plague of patent trolls damaging American innovation and our economy.  As we seek to enact effective, comprehensive patent troll reform legislation this year, we look forward to working closely with Senator Cornyn, the leadership and members of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees and other stakeholders.

Ken WaschKen Wasch is President of SIIA. Follow the SIIA Software team on twitter at @SIIASoftware.

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Filed Under: Policy, Policy - Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property Roundup

May 22, 2013 By

It is Time to Let 1,000 Flowers Bloom on Patent Trolls (SIIA Digital Discourse)
SIIA’s Keith Kupferschmid says the time has arrived for Congress to re-visit the patent troll problem and consider new legislative initiatives aimed at addressing the continuing problem.

Judge Says Copyright Owners Can’t Sue Google’s YouTube as a Group (Reuters)
U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton denied a motion to certify a worldwide class of copyright owners in a long-running lawsuit over videos and music posted on YouTube without their permission.

Berkeley-Led Group Central to U.S. Copyright Review (Managing Intellectual Property)
As the U.S. Congress embarks on a sweeping review of copyright law, the Copyright Principles Project (CPP) has emerged as a powerful voice in Washington. All five witnesses at the first in a series of congressional hearings on overhauling copyright law are members of the group.

Piracy: A Not-So-Victimless Crime (Digtriad.com)
U.S. postal inspectors arrested a man accused of selling pirated copies of Adobe software on eBay and making as much as $42,000 a month off the sales.

Keith Kupferschmid is General Counsel and SVP, Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement at SIIA.

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Filed Under: Anti-Piracy, Policy - Intellectual Property

SIIA Releases White Paper, Policy Guide for Data-Driven Innovation, Comments on USG Cyber Procurement

May 21, 2013 By

SIIA Releases White Paper, Policy Guide for Data-Driven Innovation

On Monday, SIIA released a white paper that provides an in-depth look at the benefits of Data-driven Innovation, along with a detailed public policy roadmap. SIIA crafted the white paper to provide guidance to help policymakers understand and enable the economic and social value of data-driven innovation, urging them to proceed cautiously and avoid policies that seek to curb the use of data, as they could stifle this nascent technological and economic revolution before it can truly take hold.

Data collection and use is at crossroads, and decisions by policymakers could have an enormous impact on American innovation, jobs and economic growth. It is essential for policymakers to recognize that data-driven innovation presents an economic growth engine that is revolutionizing our lives and will create 1.9 million U.S. jobs by 2015. With this paper, we’ve taken a comprehensive look at the issue — providing significant analysis of where the opportunities lie with data and what needs to be done to unlock its full potential. Our goal is help government and industry work together to enable the transformative power of data-driven innovation, and to avoid strict regulations that will stifle innovation and economic opportunity.

The full white paper is available here. Read more on SIIA’s Digital Discourse Blog or recent coverage by the Washington Post.

SIIA Responds to RFI on Acquisition Provisions in Cybersecurity Executive Order

Earlier this week, SIIA submitted comments in response to the GSA and DOD solicitation for input on Improving Critical Infrastructure Protection. In our comments, SIIA expresses support for the overall goals of the Administration in developing a cybersecurity framework that improves our ability to protect government information and critical infrastructure from cyber-attacks, but raises significant concerns regarding the potential effects of its implementation as proposed. Specifically, SIIA highlighted questions and concerns about the broad scope of the proposal, that it may conflict with sector-specific guidance and urges the Administration to avoid establishing a new, overly prescriptive supply chain or software assurance scheme that would establish the Government as a leader in the process of developing technology or that would create a U.S.-centric standard. Read more on SIIA’s Digital Discourse Blog.

David LeDuc is Senior Director, Public Policy at SIIA. He focuses on e-commerce, privacy, cyber security, cloud computing, open standards, e-government and information policy. Follow the SIIA public policy team on Twitter at @SIIAPubPolicy.

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Filed Under: Digital Policy Roundup, Policy

SIIA Responds to RFI on Acquisition Provisions in Cybersecurity Executive Order

May 21, 2013 By

Earlier this week SIIA submitted comments in response to the proposed implementation of Section 8(e) of Executive Order 13636 – Improving Critical Infrastructure Protection, issued on February 12, 2013.  We greatly appreciate the opportunity to provide formal comments to GSA and DOD on this critical section of the Executive Order.

SIIA shares the overall goals of the Administration in developing a cybersecurity framework that improves our ability to protect government information and critical infrastructure from cyber-attacks.  In fact, many SIIA members provide products and services that protect businesses, consumers and public sector entities from cyber-attacks, viruses and a wide-range of online security threats.  As a result of this experience, these members have a critical voice in the debate on the implementation of Section 8(e) of the Executive Order.  While we recognize the importance of the overall goals of the Executive Order we have some significant concerns regarding the potential effects of its implementation as proposed in the RFI.

Most notably, we have an overarching concern that the RFI itself does not accurately reflect the carefully crafted definition of “critical infrastructure” reflected in the Executive Order.  Instead the RFI appears to sweep all IT companies or their customers into the same regulatory basket as the most critical systems.  This distinction is crucial as not all systems and assets should be required to comply with this level of regulation.

In addition, SIIA expressed concerns in our comments about how the development of a broad cybersecurity framework, an ongoing process at NIST, may impact sector-specific guidance such as what is proposed here for government contractor / acquisition sector.  As a result, we have requested that the implementation of Section 8(e) be delayed until NIST cybersecurity framework has been fully developed.

Furthermore, we support the “common criteria” as a globally recognized, effective solution to a rapidly changing IT marketplace, we caution the Administration to avoid  establishing any new, overly prescriptive supply chain or software assurance scheme that would establish the Government as a leader in the process of developing technology or the would create a US centric standard, as this would conflict with the proven security regime that has long been the foundation of our national security strategy.

We also point out concerns about how that which is proposed in this Executive Order may impact the consistent, accepted, risk-based government cybersecurity requirements contained in FISMA.  Beyond its impact on FISMA, the Executive Order may also overlap with and be redundant to the FedRAMP program, potentially subjecting any Internet-enabled computing services utilized by the government to new baseline security assessments, on top of the existing FISMA and FedRAMP requirements. Not only would this practice be costly, slow, and inefficient, but it could lead to new technology-specific overlays for services that are already being utilized and assessed by the federal government in a technologically-neutral way.

Lastly, we highlight our concerns regarding the potential effect of the rules proposed as a result of the Executive Order on the other major cyber-related requirements, both current and proposed, including those found in the FAR, the DFARS, FISMA and the last two National Defense Authorization Acts.

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG. Sign up for the Public Sector Innovation Roundup email newsletter for weekly updates.

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Filed Under: Policy, Policy - Cybersecurity, PSIG Tagged With: , ,

It is Time to Let 1,000 Flowers Bloom on Patent Trolls

May 21, 2013 By

On Sunday, an article in the Washington Post suggested that the Supreme Court’s decision in the Monsanto patent infringement case “creates the theoretical possibility of biotech “patent trolls” who sue farmers for accidentally planting infringing seeds.”  It appears that the author may have been confusing the present patent troll problem with a patent mole problem because the theoretical fallout faced by the biotech industry from the Monsanto case seems to have little or nothing in common with the very real patent troll problem technology industry and their customers–including retailers, supermarkets, and financial service companies–have been facing for quite some time now.

The patent troll problem was addressed to some extent back in September 2011 when the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) was passed.  But even then, we all knew that the AIA only addressed part of the problem and that it was just a matter of time before Congress would need to re-visit the issue and consider new legislative initiatives aimed at addressing the continuing patent troll problem.  That time has arrived.

In the near future we expect that leaders in the relevant House and Senate Committees will release draft bills that will begin the process of more formally discussing how best to combat the patent troll plague.  But this time around, the discussions aren’t just about how these trolls are adversely affecting the software, hardware and other technology industries.  Ordinary end-users–like your neighborhood supermarket–have become part of the conversation as the take-no-prisoners approach of patent trolls has expanded to suing the customers of high tech companies.  Legislation is needed to ensure that companies are able to voluntarily intervene in cases where their customers are sued.

This new tactic of suing the users of patented technology rather than the manufacturers  represents just one of a litany of patent troll-related problems that needs to be addressed.  It is our view that any legislation in this space must include proposals that help combat the patent troll problem at both the litigation and the pre-litigation stage.  These proposals may include legislation to address:

  • The asymmetry in patent discovery
  • The problem of identifying the real-party-in-interest during litigation – and even more importantly during prosecution of the patent application as well as any grant or conveyance of the patent
  • The awarding of court costs and attorneys’ fees in patent cases in a manner that will effectively impede a troll’s ability to bring unwarranted infringement suits.  The first step in ensuring such effectiveness is inclusion of a bond requirement that prevents a patent troll from circumventing an attorneys’ fee award by setting themselves up to be judgment proof
  • The need for heightened pleading requirements with enough specificity regarding the product(s) and/or feature(s) that satisfy the claim limitations

These are just a few of the concepts that need to be fully aired and discussed.   We would like to see other concepts on the table – concepts relating to damages, willfulness and venue  – which in our view still need to be addressed.  But whatever measures are considered, they need to be effective. It is  essential that those proposals  are considered, and move forward–not watered down.

At this early stage of the discussions we see no reason to restrict the dialogue to consideration of a few proposals.  Instead, we favor the “let a thousand flowers bloom” approach – so long as those flowers don’t come from Monsanto seeds.

Keith Kupferschmid is General Counsel and SVP, Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement at SIIA.

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Filed Under: Policy, Policy - Intellectual Property Tagged With: , , ,

IBM’s Watson Graduates from Winning Jeopardy to Changing Healthcare

May 20, 2013 By

Two years ago IBM Watson competed and won on Jeopardy against two of the shows most successful contestants.  Watson was able to achieve this feat by using natural language processing and big data to comprehend the questions and then come up with the correct answer.  Since this initial historic achievement IBM has been working on making Watson work in the real world.  Now Watson is working with Doctors at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) to help the proliferation of medical information and improve health care efficiency and quality. 

Last week I was able to attend a briefing where IBM showcased how Watson is proliferating medical information and improving health care efficiency and quality.  While at this briefing I kept thinking about how this was a perfect real life case study of using big data and how it fit in with SIIA’s recent white paper  Data-Driven Innovation A Guide for Policymakers: Understanding and Enabling the Economic and Social Value of Data.

The briefing was led by Dr. Martin Kohn, the Chief Medical Scientist of IBM and Dr. Mark Kris, the Chief Thoracic Oncology Service at MSKCC.  During the briefing they showed us how Watson is able to use a patient’s record and look at relevant data to come up with a list of potential treatment plans and their odds of being successful.  If important information is missing Watson lets the doctors know what information it needs in order to make a decision.  Over time as the patient has new symptoms or gets back the results of certain tests or treatments or expresses preferences on treatment Watson takes all of these things into consideration when coming up new treatments and their probabilities of success.  Additionally based on the information Watson has received it can diagnose or change the diagnosis of a patient.

Dr. Kris believes that Watson is successful at diagnosing and offering treatments because it looks at everything not just what people believe are important.  The other reason he believes Watson is successful is because it goes about things the way a doctor would such as giving a list of possibilities not one definite solution and the likelihood of various treatments being successful.  Watson has the added ability to look at information collected by doctors in the field around the world and use their cumulative knowledge instead of just relying on what a few specific doctors at that hospital know.  Just like with people Watson is able to learn and remember things so the more patients it works with the better it is able to do in the future. 

While these initial results of transforming Watson from a games show winner into a doctor have been promising there are still many problems they have to work on fixing before using Watson at the hospital becomes a common occurrence.  The two biggest of which are that for Watson to come up with diagnoses and treatments requires it to analyze and store massive amounts of data which is very costly to do at the moment.  The second is that at the moment they need to figure out how to best maximize the use of Watson as it is only capable of working in a narrow field at the moment such as cancer instead of in the broader field of healthcare.  Both Dr. Kohn and Dr. Kris stressed that Watson at the time is a tool that can be used to support or come up with a second opinion on things but is not a substitute for an actual doctor. 

At the moment Watson is a useful tool at the MSKCC but there is a still lot of work that needs to be done before it is able to potentially revolutionize the healthcare industry.  The most important thing is to remember the use of big data to create Data Driven Innovation to create real world benefits is still in the early stages and the best thing we can do is to not put restrictions or limitations on how or why it is used or collected so that we don’t accidentally prevent monumental changes in how we do things from happening.

Ken WaschDenys Emmert is the Public Policy intern at SIIA. He has a degree in marketing and political science from Florida State University.

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Filed Under: Policy, Policy - Cloud Computing, Software
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