Op-Eds

Ambassador Jeffrey Gerrish, former deputy U.S. Trade Representative, and Andrei Iancu, C4IP co-chair and former USPTO director, recently published an opinion piece in Fox News highlighting the importance of strong intellectual property protections to the U.S. economy. The authors explain how foreign countries have long benefited from American innovation while ignoring the patent protections U.S. companies need to compete, and that restoring stronger patent rights is essential to protecting the American innovators. They also argue that while tariffs have received much public attention recently, the administration’s efforts to defend American intellectual property abroad could have an even greater long-term impact. But they note that more can still be done to cement these protections, including the passage of the RESTORE Patent Rights Act. “Strong IP protections incentivize and protect those investments — and all Americans benefit from the ensuing economic growth and technological progress. IP-intensive industries support nearly half of U.S. GDP and more than 62 million jobs,” Gerrish and Iancu explain. “And that’s why, in the long run, the administration’s lower-profile efforts to strengthen IP protections may actually prove even more beneficial for American companies, workers and consumers than its much-touted tariff policy.” Read the full op-ed here: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/not-just-tariffs-foreign-nations-profited-off-us-now-trump-striking-back

In a new piece for Newsweek, Mircea Geoană, former NATO deputy secretary general and president of the Aspen Institute Romania, and Andrei Iancu, C4IP co-chair and former USPTO Director, warn that protecting intellectual property (IP) is not merely a trade issue, but a national security imperative. Strong and enforceable IP rights give innovators the confidence to pursue risky breakthroughs, from cybersecurity to artificial intelligence systems. They point out that strong IP protections have long underpinned Western security. During the Cold War, for instance, breakthroughs like stealth technology, GPS, and satellite communications were made possible by a strong innovation ecosystem that fostered discovery and entrepreneurship. While Western nations are busy debating the merits of IP protections, China now leads in 57 of 64 critical technologies and issues nearly three times more patents than the United States — advances driven in part by systematic IP theft. If Western nations fail to enforce strong protections, they risk ceding military and economic advantages to foreign adversaries. “IP rights are the load-bearing walls of innovation,” they explain. “If they are weak or inconsistently enforced, vulnerabilities emerge that directly threaten NATO’s technological superiority.” Read the full op-ed here: https://www.newsweek.com/defend-nations-nato-must-defend-innovation-opinion-2115891

In a recent op-ed for Bloomberg Law, C4IP Board Members and retired Federal Circuit Judges Paul Michel and Kathleen O’Malley argue that Congress must pass the bipartisan Patent Eligibility Restoration Act in order to repair the damage the Supreme Court has inflicted on America’s innovation ecosystem. For more than a decade, a series of rulings has narrowed the types of inventions eligible for patent protection. The Court’s 2012 Mayo v. Prometheus decision effectively stripped patent eligibility from medical diagnostics, triggering an estimated $9 billion drop in diagnostic investment over the next four years. Then came Alice v. CLS Bank, which led to a sweeping denial of software and AI patents. As Judges Michel and O’Malley point out, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected most AI patent applications it received in 2018 because they were deemed ineligible. These rulings have slowed America’s progress in critical areas like biological manufacturing and artificial intelligence while global counterparts, particularly China, surge ahead. “By restoring patent eligibility for categories of inventions that courts have wrongly declared ineligible… PERA would once again give US inventors and companies confidence to invest in technologies that will define our future,” Judges Michel and O’Malley write. “After over a decade of ongoing harm, it is time for Congress to fix the Supreme Court’s mistakes.”