January Highlights: Defending American IP on the Global Stage
America’s intellectual property system increasingly faces challenges that come not from within the United States but from outside it. Historically, the largest foreign threat to American IP has been outright theft by companies and governments. But while U.S. policymakers have made strides in combating IP theft by foreign actors in recent years, subtler and more sophisticated threats have also begun to emerge. Foreign governments are using procedural and regulatory tools to weaken U.S. companies’ IP rights abroad, harming American innovators and our nation’s competitiveness on the global stage.
In the life sciences, for example, the European Union’s recently finalized General Pharmaceutical Legislation threatens to undermine medical innovation by reducing baseline periods of regulatory data protection and expanding patent infringement exemptions to cover commercial activities. In the technology sector, foreign jurisdictions including the United Kingdom and China have proposed or implemented policies that allow courts or governments to unilaterally dictate global licensing terms for standard-essential patents, overriding fair licensing rates set by the market. Furthermore, the continued influx of counterfeit goods into the United States poses serious risks to consumer safety and robs American innovators of rightfully earned revenue. These practices all undermine U.S. companies’ ability to invest in future research, manufacturing, and American jobs.
In January, C4IP Co-Chair Andrei Iancu appeared before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade to testify on how these foreign actions, left unchecked, will undermine U.S. competitiveness. To fortify U.S. innovation leadership, Iancu urged lawmakers to ensure strong IP enforcement in agreements such as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, crack down on harmful foreign practices through the U.S. Trade Representative’s Special 301 Report, and pass domestic reforms like the RESTORE Act, Patent Eligibility Restoration Act, and PREVAIL Act to strengthen patent protections here at home.
- C4IP Co-Chair Andrei Iancu testified before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade, advising lawmakers on how to strengthen American IP rights and curb IP abuses abroad.
Read It Now: Testimony of Andrei Iancu, Hearing on Maintaining American Innovation and Technology Leadership
- Iancu’s comments on troubling foreign policies such as the European Union’s General Pharmaceutical Legislation, China’s unilateral SEP rate-setting, and Canadian and Mexican free-riding on U.S. drug innovation were the subject of an article in IPWatchdog.
- Iancu’s support for specific domestic reforms, including the RESTORE Act, the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act, and the PREVAIL Act, was covered extensively in an article in VitalLaw.
- Iancu’s testimony was also featured in MeriTalk’s coverage of the hearing and in JDSupra’s weekly roundup of health care news.
Additional Coalition Updates
- On January 29, C4IP, the University of California, Irvine (UCI), and the Orange County Business Council (OCBC) hosted Members of Congress, academics, local policymakers, business leaders, and innovation experts for a discussion on the state of innovation in Orange County.
- On January 28, C4IP submitted public comments to the U.S. Trade Representative in response to its Request for Comments and Notice of Public Hearing Regarding the 2026 Special 301 Review.
- On January 28, C4IP Chief Policy Officer and Counsel Jamie Simpson was a featured panelist in a USC Gould School of Law webinar on the relationship between patents, innovation, and technology leadership.
- On January 21, C4IP Executive Director Frank Cullen was interviewed by Fox 13 Now in Salt Lake City, Utah, about the physical and economic dangers posed by fake sports merchandise and other counterfeit products.
- Cullen’s interview also aired across 13 additional stations in Michigan, California, Missouri, Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Florida.
- On January 13, C4IP’s 2024 public comment critiquing the USPTO’s proposed framework for patent eligibility of AI-assisted inventions was quoted in a Eurasia Review article analyzing the evolution of USPTO guidance and case law on inventions related to artificial intelligence.
- On January 8, C4IP Co-Chair David Kappos published an opinion essay in Fortune elaborating on the work of the researchers who were awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics and explaining how their conclusions underscore the importance of strong IP protections to scientific progress and economic growth.
“[A] strong IP system prohibits companies from merely pushing each other off an existing rung of the ladder, in a zero-sum struggle. It forces them to climb higher than incumbents.”
- On January 8, C4IP Executive Director Frank Cullen issued a statement responding to the European Union’s newly finalized General Pharmaceutical Legislation, which threatens to undermine medical innovation and encourage continued free-riding on American research unless it is swiftly amended to include stronger IP