April Highlights: Celebrating World IP Day and Congressional Champions of Innovation
On April 26, the global intellectual property community celebrated World Intellectual Property Day, which offers an annual reminder of the importance of IP protections to creativity, competition, and economic growth. This year’s celebration focused on the role of IP in sports, where patents, trademarks, copyrights, broadcast rights, and rights of publicity help protect everything from team identities and athlete likenesses to performance technologies and digital fan experiences.
C4IP marked the occasion by publicly recognizing the value that IP rights provide to the global sports ecosystem. But this World IP Day also launched a new tradition for C4IP: honoring Congress’s strongest IP advocates as “Champions of Innovation.” The 16 lawmakers chosen as Champions of Innovation all have strong records of leadership on IP policy issues. On April 21, C4IP held its inaugural Champions of Innovation Award Reception on Capitol Hill to recognize these deserving honorees.
- C4IP Executive Director Frank Cullen issued a statement celebrating World IP Day and highlighting the role of IP in protecting the economic value, authenticity, and innovative capacity of the modern sports ecosystem.
- C4IP Chief Operations Officer John Cabeca joined policymakers and industry leaders as a panelist at a World IP Day roundtable at the European Parliament. The discussion explored how strong IP protections catalyze innovation in sports technology and enrich the experience for athletes and fans alike.
- C4IP published a blog post which further explored how various types of IP — including trademarks, copyrights, and patents — are vital to the sports industry.
- C4IP also issued a statement recognizing 16 members of Congress — Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Ted Budd (R-NC), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Chris Coons (D-DE), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Rick Scott (R-FL), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Todd Young (R-IN), alongside Representatives Madeleine Dean (D-PA), Hank Johnson (D-GA), Kevin Kiley (I-CA), Nathaniel Moran (R-TX), Scott Peters (D-CA), and Deborah Ross (D-NC) — as Champions of Innovation for their bipartisan support of American ingenuity, IP, and the nation’s innovation ecosystem.
- C4IP hosted a Champions of Innovation Award Reception on Capitol Hill to present these lawmakers with official awards commemorating their impact.
- The event was featured in POLITICO’s Influence newsletter.
Additional Coalition Updates
- On May 11, C4IP Co-Chair Andrei Iancu and Advisory Board Member Laura Peter will appear as featured speakers at the USPTO’s celebration of its Southwest Regional Outreach Office’s 10th anniversary in Dallas.
- On May 1, C4IP issued a statement applauding the release of the Office of the United States Trade Representative’s (USTR) 2026 Special 301 Report and highlighting the importance of strong and enforceable IP protections to sustaining America’s global innovation leadership.
- On April 24, C4IP’s Board of Directors sent a letter to the European Commission commending the recommendation of a recent study on the European Union’s Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) to not open the IPRED to revision, but outlining concerns of methodological flaws and inaccurate assumptions that risk misleading policymakers and undermining European innovation.
- On April 23, C4IP was proud to sponsor the 2026 Invention of the Year Awards at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. At this event, which honored inventors for their exceptional new patented inventions, C4IP Advisory Board Member Laura Peter provided opening comments, and C4IP Executive Director Frank Cullen served as a judge.
- On April 23, C4IP Executive Director Frank Cullen issued a statement commending the European Commission’s decision to drop a proposed “soft safe harbour” for licensing negotiation groups — which would have raised competition concerns and risked promoting below-FRAND licensing terms — from its revised guidelines for technology transfer.
- On April 21, C4IP Executive Director Frank Cullen submitted a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee ahead of its hearing on Chinese IP theft, urging policymakers to confront China’s many predatory IP practices — including and beyond IP theft — while strengthening the U.S. patent system at home.
- On April 20, C4IP Executive Director Frank Cullen submitted a letter to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet ahead of its hearing on codes development, emphasizing the importance of strong copyright protection to the development of codes and technological standards.
- On April 15, C4IP’s statement opposing the ETHIC Act and debunking the myth of “patent thickets” was cited in an IPWatchdog article on the bill. The ETHIC Act is predicated on this misleading narrative that aims to weaken patent enforcement.
- On April 14, C4IP released a report by Professor Jonathan Barnett, the Torrey H. Webb Professor of Law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, on the market impact of licensing negotiation groups.
Read It Now: “An Unbalanced Proposal: Licensing Negotiation Groups for Wireless Technology in the Automotive Industry“
- On March 29, C4IP Advisory Board Member Laura Peter published an opinion essay in Fortune arguing that policymakers must strengthen patent protections for cutting-edge research and development in order for the United States to win the AI race.
“If Washington is serious about AI leadership, it must recognize that the global AI race is also an IP race — and strengthen the U.S. patent system accordingly.”
On March 27, C4IP Advisory Board Member Laura Peter published an opinion essay in IPWatchdog explaining how the PREVAIL Act could address abusive litigation at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board without harming legitimate patent holders.