February was a busy month for C4IP! Here’s a roundup of what our Coalition accomplished over the past month.
February Highlights: Protecting the Bayh-Dole Act
February 6 concluded NIST’s public comment period for the newly proposed “march-in” framework, which would twist the Bayh-Dole Act into a mechanism for government price control. If implemented, such government intervention would distort the commercial investment landscape for new innovation across all areas of technology receiving government funding, introducing significant uncertainties and risks for inventors and investors. The framework would lead to the breakdown of public-private partnerships, and the fruitful innovation emanating from them over the past 40+ years.
This month, C4IP actively engaged in and supported initiatives advocating for the withdrawal of this ill-conceived and legally unsupported framework:
- Nine former Commerce Department officials, including C4IP Co-Chairs Andrei Iancu and David Kappos and former Commerce Secretaries Gary Locke and Carlos Gutierrez, penned a joint letter to President Biden strongly opposing the framework.
- Bloomberg Law and IP Watchdog each highlighted the letter from the former Commerce Department officials in articles chronicling the widespread opposition to the Biden administration’s proposal.
- Two email newsletters also circulated the letter: Politico’s West Wing Playbook and STAT’s C. Diagnosis.
- C4IP Executive Director Frank Cullen submitted comments to NIST opposing the framework and highlighting the devastating effects that it would have on the U.S. innovation ecosystem.
- IPWatchdog featured the public comments in a recent article.
- Many other pro-innovation organizations representing manufacturers, small businesses, university tech transfer offices, and more also submitted powerful comments advocating against the framework.
- C4IP compiled excerpts from 32 of them in a “What They’re Saying” document.
- C4IP Co-Chairs Andrei Iancu and David Kappos expanded on the reasoning for opposing the march-in framework in an opinion essay published in World Intellectual Property Review.
- Life Sciences Intellectual Property Review also published the piece.
- C4IP Co-Chair David Kappos was quoted in an opinion essay published by the Detroit News Editorial Board, which criticized the Biden administration’s radical reinterpretation of Bayh-Dole and underscored its devastating impact on innovation coupled with other continuing attacks on the patent system, such as PTAB abuse and patent ineligibility for emerging technologies.
Additional Coalition Updates
- On February 21, C4IP Co-Chair David Kappos published an opinion essay in the Brussels Times underscoring how the European Commission’s proposal to micromanage standard-essential patent licensing would devastate European innovation.
- On February 20, C4IP hosted a roundtable at the University of Texas at Tyler, where Congressman Nathaniel Moran (R-TX), C4IP Co-Chair Andrei Iancu and Executive Director Frank Cullen, and several local business leaders discussed East Texas’s path to becoming a national innovation hub.
- The Tyler Telegraph published an article about the event featuring comments from Andrei Iancu.
- KETK-TV also aired a segment on the event.
- On February 12, C4IP released a statement officially opening applications for its summer internship program in Washington, D.C. C4IP is accepting applications from law students through March 31.
- On February 6, C4IP Executive Director Frank Cullen sent a letter to the Senate IP Subcommittee expressing strong support for the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act in the wake of the subcommittee’s Jan. 23 hearing on the bill.