Intellectual Property
SIIA seeks to promote a healthy intellectual property ecosystem, one in which quality patents provide robust incentives to invest in new technologies and copyright protection encourages the creation and dissemination of expressive works.
POLICY PRIORITIES
SIIA’s members are both users and owners of patented technology. Continued innovation depends on a healthy patent system. Due to poor patent quality and resultant litigation abuses, SIIA actively supports the inter partes review (IPR) system created by the America Invents Act, as well as existing patent eligibility standards, and has resisted efforts to make the IPR process more difficult to use.
Defending against the erosion of section 101 and the Alice decision as a bulwark against troll lawsuits
SIIA supports legislative, regulatory, and policy measures to foster responsible development and use of AI, including impact assessments, and risk-based, technology-neutral data governance frameworks.
Restoring the efficacy of the IPR process
SIIA advocates for legislative and policy efforts to restore the efficacy of the IPR process, including the Restore the America Invents Act, and opposes the Finitiv rule established by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2018. SIIA engages in amicus efforts to support members’ patent interests and other litigation to support the integrity of the patent system.
POLICY PRIORITIES - COPYRIGHT
SIIA members–many of whom are educational, science, technical, and medical publishers–rely on copyright protection and the incentives that copyright law provides to create and disseminate works. SIIA members also run platforms that require a certain degree of certainty when users put infringing works on their systems. Thus, although they have differing views about particular parts of the copyright system, on the whole they believe the substantive parts of current law are working.
Maintaining the incentives and certainty of existing copyright law
As an association representing the information industry, SIIA recognizes that the copyright law and surrounding policy needs to both encourage investment and allow for productive uses. Thus, for example, SIIA members support open access publishing, but oppose legislative or regulatory steps that would make it the only viable scientific publishing business model as destructive to both the copyright system and to a shared vision of scientific truth.
For the same reasons, SIIA supports preserving the existing balance struck by the DMCA, which provides the certainty needed to make works available in digital form and requires platforms to be responsive to copyright complaints without mandating technologies or diminishing innovation.
Modernizing the U.S. Copyright Office
The U.S. Copyright Office, which resides in the legislative branch as part of the Library of Congress, is significantly underfunded and understaffed. It is obligated to use the Library of Congress’s antiquated and inefficient information technology systems, which creates challenges for registration and licensing. SIIA works with other copyright owner groups towards legislation that would modernize the Office and give it more independence from the Library.
Recent Actions
SIIA’s Comments on the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Commercial Surveillance and Data Security Federal Trade Commission
SIIA thanks the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for the opportunity to provide this written comment on its Advanced …
SIIA Letter on Indian Telecommunication Bill, 2022
SIIA provided feedback on the draft Indian Telecommunication Bill, 2022 (ITB), circulated for public comment on 21 September …
Transatlantic Business Associations Join in Strong Support of EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework
Today, SIIA joined a coalition of associations representing the transatlantic business community, appreciate the U.S. Administration’s recently published …
Data Protection Efforts with Socially Beneficial Use Cases
Learn more about how three leading data processing platforms are supporting responsible data sharing.
SIIA Commends White House on Release of Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights: Making Automated Systems Work for the American People
This statement can be attributed to Paul Lekas, Senior Vice President, Global Public Policy, Software & Information Industry Association: …
Statement on NetChoice v. Paxton
Today the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) President Chris Mohr issued this statement. “We are disappointed in …
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