Digital Discourse / Archives for patent reform

Sen. Cyber Bill Introduced, IT and IP implications of FY13 Budget, and Patent Reform Rules Proposed

February 14, 2012 By

Cyber

The long-awaited Senate comprehensive cybersecurity legislation, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, was officially introduced this afternoon by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Susan Collins (R-ME), Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).  And Sen. Lieberman’s Homeland Security Cmte. will hold a legislative hearing on Thursday.

SIIA issued a statement in response to the legislation expressing support for the significant progress in striking a balance between preserving innovation and identifying and regulating critical infrastructure, and urging swift, bipartisan support for legislation that would advance critical cybersecurity priorities to immediately enhance our cybersecurity preparedness.

IT Implications of President’s FY13 Budget

The President’s FY13 budget proposal introduced this week includes a couple key items that reflect the continued support for IP protection.  First, the proposal includes a $5 million increase in funding to combat piracy and counterfeiting, raising the total spent to combat IP crimes by the USG to $40 million. Also, the budget provides support for the PTO’s new fee-setting authority and termination of fee diversion, estimating that the PTO will collect $2.9 billion in 2013, but any amount received in excess of $2.9 billion and deposited in shall remain available to the PTO until expended.

On the Fed. IT funding front, U.S. government spending on information technology would decline 1.2 percent next fiscal year, as part of the efforts to “do more with less,”  increasing efficiency through the use of cloud computing, shared services and mobile technology.

Regardless of the budget politics in an election year, these are both very significant elements, as they serve as markers for where the Obama Administration sees funding priorities that affect software and digital content companies.

Patent Reform

The US Patent & Trademark Office released notices of proposed rulemakings last week regarding a number of key provisions of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, including review of the new inter partes and post grant rules.  Comments must be submitted by early April.  Proposed fees for these procedures, as well as higher fees for applications, also were introduced, with the goal of reducing the patent backlog.  The PTO will hold a public hearing on fee proposals on February 15 at the PTO, and February 23 in Sunnyvale, CA, and the deadline for comment on the proposals is February 29th.

ACTA

With the European Parliament is scheduled to consider ACTA in June, the past few weeks have seen several EU member states, including Poland, Latvia and the Czech Republic, withdraw their intent to ratify ACTA or delayed the decision in their national parliaments in response to domestic protests.  On February 10th, in anticipation of these protests the European Commission released a “Factsheet on the Transparency of ACTA Negotiations.”

Ed-Tech Interoperability Standards

On Monday, SIIA released a Primer on K-20 Education Interoperability Standards that provides a framework for understanding interoperability standards that impact educational data, digital content, and software applications. The primer is a component of SIIA’s ongoing efforts to help inform on technical issues that are important to the success of educational technologies.

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.

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The Social Costs of Patent Trolls

September 21, 2011 By

President Obama heralded the patent reform bill’s prospects for stimulating innovation when he signed the bill last week. SIIA concurs. The new law, which represents the first major reform the patent laws in 60 years, makes critical, necessary patent improvements that will drive our country’s continued leadership in the software and information industries. SIIA has continually called for patent reform, and we are pleased to see U.S. patent law move in the right direction. Enactment of the America Invents Act will enhance patent quality and encourage growth in sectors that are poised to create jobs and renew our economy.

While there is no question that the new law is a substantial improvement over the status quo, many fear it might not bring an end to abusive patent litigation that stifles innovation and hinders job growth.

A new study by James Bessen and Mike Meurer on the social costs of patent trolls in the years 2000-2010 sheds some light on the magnitude of the patent troll problem.

They conclude that patent lawsuits from entities that hold patents but do not produce goods or services “are associated with half a trillion dollars of lost wealth to defendants from 1990 through 2010, mostly from technology companies. Moreover, very little of this loss represents a transfer to small inventors. Instead, it implies reduced innovation incentives.”

The idea that patent litigation is creating disincentives for innovation is not new. Bessen and Meurer’s 2008 book, Patent Failure, summarized here, came to a similar conclusion that during the 1990s the net benefits of patents were negative for public companies outside the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. The news is that things did not improve in the first decade of the 21st century.

Abusive patent litigation has been a staple of recent press coverage. An August report by NPR highlighted the problem of unproductive litigation by non-practicing entities. A piece by Timothy B. Lee in the current National Review underscored the same problem. Tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban pointed out in his August blog post that patent litigation risk from non-practicing entities is “unlimited,” which forces companies to set aside resources for patent litigation that would otherwise be used for further investment and job creation. Companies within SIIA report that infringement suits are on the rise, significantly, within the last year. This problem is especially severe for mobile app developers and platforms, leading some offshore app developers to shun the U.S. market for fear of patent infringement suits. Major companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft are amassing large portfolios of patents to improve their strategic position in the coming patent litigation wars.

The new law will make some improvements. It will allow the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to keep more of revenue it collects, thereby reducing the problem of bad patents, and it will make it easier to challenge bad patents after they have been granted.

But the new law applies only to new patents, and it does nothing to limit the risk of patent litigation by limiting damages from non-practicing entities. So the problem of abusive patent litigation will likely be with us for some time – along with the social costs outlined in the new Bessen and Meurer study.

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FTC urges tweaks to COPPA, Senate still pressing data security and NIST Building Cloud Roadmap

September 20, 2011 By

Big news on the privacy front last week, on Thursday the FTC issued its long awaited proposal to revise COPPA (the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act). The proposed amendments pose some significant challenges, including expanding the type of data covered by COPPA, including geolocation information and other “persistent identifiers” such as cookies for behavioral advertising. The amendments would also revise the means by which companies must notify parents and put in place new security measures to protect kids’ sensitive information. SIIA is reviewing, and comments on the proposed amendments are due Nov. 28th.

Also last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee was unable to advance any of the privacy/data security bills at its markup on Thursday due to a lack of Republican members to constitute a quorum. And the exchange between Chairman Leahy (D-VT) and Ranking Member Grassley (R-IA) revealed considerable concerns from the Republican side of the Committee that the bills present too great a new regulatory burden on businesses. The bills (S. 1151, S. 1408 and S. 1535) are again scheduled for consideration this Thursday. And not to fall behind Judiciary, Commerce Cmte. Chair Rockefeller (D-WV) scheduled–but then quickly postponed–consideration of his rival legislation, the Data security Breach Notification Act (S. 1207).

With cloud computing generating a lot of buzz in Washington recently, a couple very significant developments went little noticed. That is, NIST recently released two more key guidance documents aimed at accelerating the U.S. Government adoption of cloud computing. One is the Draft Reference Architecture, and the other the Draft Standards Roadmap. Both documents are key elements of the broad Cloud Computing Roadmap to be released in early November, seeking to provide key guidance to Federal agencies in their effort to implement the Administration’s Cloud First Policy.

Finally patent reform is officially in the books–the U.S. code, that is. On Friday, President Obama signed and officially enacted the America Invents Act (H.R. 1249, PL 112-29).

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Patent reform debate continues with considerable provisions

March 8, 2011 By

Debate on patent reform (S. 23, the America Invents Act, formerly called the Patent Reform Act of 2011) continues in the Senate through this week. The Senate voted to limit debate on Monday night, so the bill will come up for a vote as early as Tuesday, but no later than the end of this week.

The bill has been amended considerably over the last week, and currently contains many provisions that would improve the U.S. patent system and patent quality, including ending patent fee diversion.
However, there are still several provisions SIIA is concerned with, so we will continue to be heavily engaged on this issue through further Senate debate, as well as in the House.

As we reported in the past, the House is taking a more deliberative approach with respect to drafting and considering companion legislation in Committee. Stay tuned.

Also coming soon, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), one of the key congressional leaders on privacy, is expected to introduce privacy legislation soon, and follow with a hearing in his Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet next week.

For SIIA policy updates, including upcoming events, news and analysis, subscribe to SIIA’s weekly policy email newsletter, Digital Policy Roundup.

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Heavy emphasis on IP issues continues in Washington

February 14, 2011 By

Last week, SIIA welcomed Mark MacCarthy as our new VP for Public Policy. Mark brings with him more than 30 years of public policy experience, where he has played a leading role in both the public and private sectors, as well as a thought leader teaching on communications and technology for many years.

The heavy emphasis on IP issues continued last week, with a key House Judiciary Sbcmte. conducting a hearing on Patent Reform, and Cmte. Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) and IP Sbcmte. Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) making personal commitments to move “fast out of the gate” on the issue — the House legislation is currently being drafted. Earlier in the week, President Obama issued an executive order establishing two intellectual property enforcement advisory committees designed to improve the Federal Government’s intellectual property enforcement efforts. This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee will proceed with a hearing on online infringement.

Last week also saw the highly anticipated introduction of multiple privacy bills, including one from Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) reintroducing the “BEST Practices Act” with only minor changes from last session. Also, consumer advocate Jackie Speier (D-CA) introduced two privacy bills last week, one focused on “do not track,” and the other on financial information privacy.

Also of note last week, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra released a detailed Federal Cloud Strategy. The paper is a follow-up to the cloud-first policy announced in late 2010, providing a USG strategy for migration and outlining how the Fed. Gov. can accelerate the safe and secure adoption of cloud computing.

For more SIIA policy updates, including upcoming events, news and analysis, subscribe to the Digital Policy Roundup, SIIA’s weekly policy email newsletter.

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