Free Republic

If it ain’t broke, break it. This is Joe Biden’s guiding principle. He took President Donald J. Trump’s much-tighter southern border and ripped it as wide open as a gutted trout’s belly. Biden turned Trump’s energy independence into begging Iran and Venezuela to pump more oil. He also devolved Trump’s peace in the Middle East into a five-front Arab war on Israel and let the Houthi terrorists convert the Red Sea into a shooting gallery. And for his next trick, Biden wants to impersonate a Latin autocrat. On December 7, a date that shall live in infamy, Biden’s Commerce Department...

The Biden administration has proposed a new rule that would allow federal authorities to seize the patents of costly drugs that were developed using taxpayer dollars and to let third parties use those patents to make the drugs available more cheaply.The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, on Dec. 7 published a set of draft guidelines for government agencies to evaluate when it might be appropriate to invoke what are known as "march-in" rights under the legal framework of the Bayh-Dole Act.The Bayh-Dole Act, which is shorthand for the University and...

As the Trump administration has focused heavily on trade this year, it has been instructive to note the weight that has been placed on intellectual property, in both the negotiations and the results. The new USMCA treaty – the intended replacement for NAFTA – includes a whole chapter on intellectual property (IP). 2018’s wave after wave of punitive tariffs on Chinese goods, too, have been imposed in an effort to stem not only the loss of American jobs to China, but the loss of American how-to as well. Even the new layers of 10% and 25% additional tariffs on raw...

BREAKING NEWS FROM ADWEEK ONLINE*MEDIAWEEK ONLINE*BRANDWEEK ONLINE -- Tauzin Says Congress Will Have to Legislate Digital Piracy FlapPrivate industry has failed to agree on how to protect digital-TV broadcasts from Internet piracy, so Congress will move to impose standards, Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.), the chairman of the powerful House Commerce Committee, said Monday.Tauzin, who has been pushing for movement in the much-delayed transition to digital television, spoke upon emerging from a closed-door Capitol Hill meeting of broadcasters, movie studio executives, consumer group representatives and officials of the computer and consumer electronics industries.Tauzin said he had told his committee's staff to...