Coalition Updates
- September 28 will mark the one-year anniversary of C4IP’s launch. We look forward to many more years to come, dedicated to promoting strong and effective IP rights.
- On September 10, C4IP Co-Chair Andrei Iancu, C4IP Board Member Judge Kathleen O’Malley (Ret.), and USPTO Deputy Solicitor Farheena Rasheed will speak at the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO)’s Annual Meeting in Boston, MA. They will discuss how IP law is shaped by policymakers and courts — including their own roles within the IP policy system and how they interact with each other, Congress, and the public. Learn more and register for the event here.
- On August 29, C4IP Executive Director Frank Cullen issued a statement following CMS’s release of the first 10 prescription drugs subject to price controls under the Inflation Reduction Act.
- “Today’s announcement marks a concerning turn for America’s intellectual property system. Allowing the government to determine the price of breakthrough medicines just nine years after their introduction — without regard to their remaining patent term — undermines the entire premise of the U.S. patent system and its ability to incentivize future innovation.”
- On August 29, C4IP Co-Chairs Andrei Iancu and Dave Kappos published an opinion essay in Life Sciences Intellectual Property Review underscoring how billion-dollar government prizes won’t improve on market incentives.
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- “Congress does need to reauthorise the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act. But it should drop the misguided proposal to revisit drug development contests. Replacing our current system with a centrally planned regime of expensive government prizes wouldn’t promote innovation — it would squash it.”
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- On August 23, President of Personable Inc. Benjamin Chou published an opinion essay in Forbes voicing strong support of the recently reintroduced Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA).
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- “The present state of patent eligibility in America is rife with uncertainty and inconsistencies…Facing these challenges, the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2023 by Senators Thom Tillis and Chris Coons offers a promising solution. It aims to address the existing gaps in the patent system…”
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- On August 20, C4IP Co-Chairs Andrei Iancu and Dave Kappos published an opinion essay in the Boston Herald arguing that Congress should not neuter the IP system by replacing patents with prize systems.
- “Prizes were a fad hundreds of years ago. They did not work. All serious scholarship has demonstrated that prizes fail badly at incentivizing innovation, as compared to our tried-and-true patent system.”
- On August 14, C4IP Co-Chair David Kappos was featured in a BioWorld article that addressed recent proposals to replace drug patents with cash prizes.
- “A recent bipartisan request for funding of a study on replacing U.S. drug patents with cash prizes is just one more symptom of a larger global malady that makes patents the scapegoat for bigger problems that have nothing to do with intellectual property.”
- On August 3, C4IP’s Board of Directors published an opinion essay in the Brussels Morning News arguing that the European Commission’s proposal to create a “Competency Centre” to govern standard-essential patents would actually stunt tech inventorship across Europe.
- “Brussels’ plan would upend precedents that innovators have relied on for decades, raising uncertainty around whether patents truly grant meaningful rights, or are simply government favors that can be retracted or have their value reduced by bureaucrats under the political influence of more powerful corporate interests.”
- On August 2, Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) published an opinion essay in the Delaware Business Times explaining how large companies have weaponized the PTAB against patent holders and what the PREVAIL Act would do to strengthen America’s IP system.
- “PTAB has become a tool to wear down patent holders through serial challenges to their patents…[The PREVAIL Act] will reform the PTAB so that patent holders can get back to what really matters — innovation — rather than beating back constant challenges to their protected discoveries.”
- On July 24, C4IP and the University of Maryland co-hosted a roundtable, “Prince George’s County and The Innovation Ecosystem,” with Special Guest Congressman Glenn Ivey (D-MD). The event’s speakers — which also included UMD Dean Samuel Graham, Jr., UMD Chief Innovation Officer Dr. Dean Chang, venture capitalist Bob Nye, and C4IP Co-Chair David Kappos — discussed growing innovation in Prince George’s County. For more on the roundtable discussion, check out our press release and blog on the event, as well as the full transcript.
- The event was featured in the Maryland Daily Record, Center Maryland, and the Washington Informer’s Prince George’s County political rundown.
- ICYMI: C4IP submitted written comments to the NIH in advance of the agency’s recent virtual workshop, “Transforming Discoveries into Products: Maximizing NIH’s Levers to Catalyze Technology Transfer.”
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- Those within the broader intellectual property community also shared their perspectives with the NIH. Some highlights from these submissions can be found here.
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- ICYMI: C4IP announced the creation of a grant program for intellectual property research, scholarship, and writings. The program — which provides grants of up to $25,000 — will advance C4IP’s mission to provide lawmakers data-driven recommendations to inform IP policy. More information about the application process is available here, and questions about the program should be directed to C4IP Chief Policy Officer and Counsel Jamie Simpson at jamie@c4ip.org.
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- The program has been covered by IPWatchdog, Legal Scholarship Blog, and SSRN.
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Government Rundown
- USPTO, Patents for Humanity: Green Energy Deadline Extended: As an expansion to the Patents for Humanity Awards Program, the United States Patent and Trademark Office created a new category for patents pertaining to green energy technologies. The submission deadline for eligible patents is now September 15, 2023. (USPTO, 9/15)
- USPTO, INTA, and ASOP Global, Roundtable: On August 18, the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the International Trademark Association, and the Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies hosted a roundtable event addressing counterfeit drugs in the United States. Featured guest speakers included Captain Geoffrey Deedrick, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department; Elliot Vice, ASOP Global; Jason Lott, Managing Attorney for Trademarks Customer Outreach at the USPTO; Summer Kostelnik, Policy Advisor at the Office of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator.
- USPTO, Patent and Trial Appeal Board (PTAB) Boardside Chat Webinar: The United States Patent and Trademark Office recently “updated the interim Director Review process, retired the Precedential Opinion Panel process, and created the Delegated Rehearing Panel and the Appeals Review Panel.” On August 17, PTAB’s Acting Deputy Chief Judge Kalyan Deshpande, Acting Vice Chief Judge James Worth, and Lead Judge Jeffrey Abraham hosted a discussion regarding these new processes and panels. (USPTO, 8/17).
- USPTO, Trademark Public Advisory Committee Quarterly Meeting: On August 11, the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Public Advisory Committee (TPAC) held its quarterly meeting to discuss trademark-related policies, goals, performance, budgets, and user fees. The attendees included USPTO Director Kathi Vidal and TPAC Chair David Cho. (USPTO, 8/11)
Fact Check
Claim: During the NIH’s virtual workshop on July 31, Knowledge Ecology International’s (KEI) James Love claimed that the “reasonable pricing” provision required by the NIH in its Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) from 1989-1995 did not harm — but rather stimulated — the rate of biomedical research and discovery. Love stated, “You actually were often higher in the number of CRADAs issued when the reasonable pricing clause was around than you were after [it was removed].”
Correction: From 1989 to 1995, while the NIH’s “reasonable pricing” clause was in effect, the number of new CRADAs issued annually was lower than in the years immediately before and after its implementation. In fact, in just the five years following the clause’s removal, four times as many CRADAs were issued compared to the six years it was in place.
The NIH ultimately repealed the clause because of the chilling effect on technology transfer. Indeed, when announcing the removal in 1995, NIH Director Harold Varmus stated that “An extensive review of this matter over the past year indicated that the pricing clause has driven industry away from potentially beneficial scientific collaborations with PHS [Public Health service] scientists without providing an offsetting benefit to the public.”
Strong patent rights serve as a crucial incentive for innovation in the biomedical sector. The implementation of “reasonable pricing” policies can undermine this incentive. The decline in CRADAs during the period the NIH implemented such policies, followed by a significant increase after their removal, are a testament to this fact.
Bottom Line: This claim is false.
What’s Happening in Congress
As Democratic and Republican members of Congress continue to weigh legislative priorities during the 118th Congress, top of mind for those who follow intellectual property policy are:
- Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2023: In June 2023, Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons (D-DE) reintroduced legislation aimed at restoring patent eligibility for important categories of inventions — including life sciences diagnostics, gene therapies, and computer-implemented inventions — as well as resolving questions regarding the scope of patent eligibility. In so doing, the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act will foster the development of next-generation technologies across innovative industries.
- The Promoting and Respecting Economically Vital American Innovation Leadership (PREVAIL) Act: In June 2023, Senators Chris Coons (D-DE), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) — joined by Representatives Ken Buck (R-CO) and Deborah Ross (D-NC) on the House side — introduced legislation that will eliminate redundant patent invalidity challenges and safeguard Americans’ right to participate in a fair and accessible patent system. The PREVAIL Act contains important reforms to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, which will return the body to its original purpose of providing an efficient alternative to district court litigation, and will curtail the practice by patent infringers of forcing inventors to defend their patents repeatedly and in multiple fora.
- The Interagency Patent Coordination and Improvement Act of 2023: In January 2023, Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chris Coons (D-DE), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced the Interagency Patent Coordination and Improvement Act of 2023. The bill would create an interagency task force to share patent filing information and technical assistance between USPTO and FDA officials. IP experts warn that interagency entanglement could weaken the patent system by inserting officials from multiple federal agencies — without patent law expertise — into the examination process. They submit that it is premature to implement such substantial changes without conducting a thorough evidence-based study.
Celebrating American Innovation
Inventor Spotlight
This month, C4IP recognizes Clarence Birdseye — the “Father of Frozen Food” — whose invention of the quick-freezing method pioneered the modern frozen foods industry.
Clarence Birdseye was born in 1886 in Brooklyn, New York. From an early age, Birdseye had a strong interest in the natural sciences; he studied biology for two years at Amherst College before leaving to work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Birdseye’s assignments brought him to Arizona, New Mexico, and finally to Labrador in 1912, where he would discover the inspiration for his groundbreaking invention.
At the time, frozen food in the United States was poor in quality and unpopular compared to alternatives like canned or dried food. But in Labrador, Birdseye observed how the Inuit made use of the icy outdoor conditions to quickly freeze fish and game without compromising the food’s flavor or texture.
Realizing that the speed of the freezing method was crucial to preserving food quality, Birdseye returned to the United States, where he invented a machine that could quickly and efficiently freeze fish. He founded Birdseye Seafoods, Inc. in 1924, received a patent for his invention in 1930, and shortly afterward introduced his frozen products to consumers in Springfield, Massachusetts. He also helped develop refrigerated grocery display cases and refrigerated boxcars to expand the new frozen food industry. By 1944, Birdseye frozen foods were transported nationwide.
Today, the frozen food industry — which still uses the quick-freezing techniques invented by Birdseye — is worth over $230 billion globally. Nearly 99 percent of American households purchase frozen food each year, with over two-thirds of Americans consuming frozen food at least once a week. The accessibility of frozen food has helped countless consumers save money and combat food waste.