Free Republic

As the coronavirus threat grows, we are all hoping to limit its spread, or even better, invent a vaccine. Yet, at the very same time we need new treatments some people are proposing to abandon decades of proven success in innovation policy. Fortunately, there is widespread support and mounting evidence in favor of keeping the pro-innovation approach that has always defined the American spirit. The American bio-pharmaceutical industry leads the world in innovation. Americans have access to newer treatments, sooner. And that's not all. A recent report highlighted that sector of our economy supports more than 4 million American. A...

One of Donald Trump's more memorable promises on the campaign trail was to lower the cost of prescription drugs. Polls show this issue remains popular with Americans, especially lower-income families, who are worried about high drug prices. Of course, the entire concept of drug prices' being "too high" is subjective. Drugs are too expensive ... compared with what? Certainly not compared with not having the drugs available at all. If you suffer from the intense pain of migraine headaches or have been diagnosed with lung cancer, how much would you pay for a drug to help you? I have friends...

Linux was a 'cancer' but Microsoft is now defending it IBM, Microsoft and the Linux Foundation have partnered with the Open Invention Network (OIN), a company formed to protect Linux from patent threats, to take on "Patent Assertion Entities", also known as patent trolls.Specifically, the group will help fund the Open Source Zone of Unified Patents, an organisation which provides legal services to deter "unsubstantiated or invalid patent assertions".The move had already been flagged at the Open Source Summit in Lyon last month, but the identity of the participating companies was not then known. OIN CEO Keith Bergelt spoke to...

Full title: FBI has 1,000 investigations into Chinese intellectual property theft, director Christopher Wray says, calling China the most severe counter-intelligence threat to US -- Arrests of people involved in Chinese operations to steal US corporate secrets have risen sharply in recent years Washington says problem is exacerbated by ‘Thousand Talents’ programme, which rewards Chinese professionals overseas who bring technology back to China -- The Federal Bureau of Investigation has nearly 1,000 investigations open into economic espionage and attempted intellectual property theft, nearly all of them leading back to China, FBI director Christopher Wray said on Tuesday. “There is no...

This is a story about patents, but more importantly, it’s a story about how the United States has become a modern-day version of the Banana Republic. The term “Banana Republic” was coined by American author O. Henry in 1904 in reference to Honduras which came under extraordinary influence by multinational American fruit corporations. Banana Republics are societies characterized by their starkly stratified social classes and a ruling-class plutocracy composed of the business, political and military elites. The Elites rule over a servile government that abets and supports, for “contributions,” kickbacks and bribes, the exploitation of the rest of society. Instead...

For trial lawyers, Big Pharma, and assorted other profiteers off American misery, the Supreme Court case Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank is like holy water thrown in the face of a vampire. They cannot abide exposure to it and will shrink away into the darkness with a variety of imprecations and hissing sounds. Also like vampires, the anti-Alice crowd constantly seeks to be invited into the house to rid themselves of this nuisance. Well, actually, in the anti-Alice case, it’s both the House and Senate. Which brings me to the case of Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.),...

Imagine the following scenario: You spend your life slaving away at building some ingenious new device in your garage. After years of painstaking work, testing, and sleepless nights, you finally produce your device, patent it, and take it to market. However, before you can take it to market, someone serves you with a lawsuit.

“Hans Sauer of BIO said that it is easy to argue—after the heavy lifting of discovery and development has been done and a product has made it to market—that it should not be patented in the public interest. ‘As if innovative products fell from the sky and ought to go directly into the public domain…. It is right to encourage complaints about problems, but we must do so with an appreciation of the system’s longer-term benefits for society.’” Wednesday’s Senate hearing on patent eligibility reform, which began more than 30 minutes late due to votes on the floor, opened with...

“I’ve spent 22 years on the Federal Circuit and nine years since dealing with patent cases and I cannot predict [under the current law] in a given case whether eligibility will be found or not found. If I can’t do it, how can bankers, venture capitalists [and] business executives make reliable predictions and sensible decisions?” – Judge Paul Michel The first of three scheduled hearings in which the Senate IP Subcommittee will hear testimony from a total of 45 witnesses on the subject of patent eligibility law raised many questions. While some read the proposed draft bill released by Congress...

“I asked to participate in the 101 Roundtable and was denied access based of the fact that I am ‘media.’ Yet, the tech giants that are rejecting reform are allowed to participate and still engage in a carefully coordinated public relations campaign.” On June 19, it will be five years since the United States Supreme Court issued a decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank, 134 S.Ct. 2347 (2014), which significantly changed the way courts and patent examiners evaluated patent eligibility of computer implemented innovation in the United States. While the Supreme Court ostensibly extended the patent eligibility analysis applied...

Full title: "Sherry Knowles Scrutinizes an Activist Supreme Court and its Unconstitutional Approach to Patent Eligibility" “The Supreme Court has brazenly admitted it is not following Congress’ statutory instructions on patent eligibility in several cases. And it has carried out virtually none of the required statutory construction. It is judicial activism in the extreme.”Sherry Knowles is one of the best known patent attorneys you will find. She is a former Vice President and Chief Patent Counsel for GlaxoSmithKline, where she led the charge on behalf of the industry to fight back the claims and continuations rules package the United States...

I recently had the pleasure to sit on a panel with a number of incredible inventors and leaders on innovation issues in an experience that was both inspiring and infuriating. Discussing a new documentary on the patent system – Invalidated: The Shredding of the US Patent System – which I had the honor of being interviewed for, we discussed the state of the patent system and American innovation. I was inspired by these inventors who joined, and others who participated in this movie. Through ingenuity, creativity and persistence they have created inventions that save lives, increase productivity, make life easier...

Actual Title -- Nantkwest, Inc. v. Iancu This is an except because it is too long to post in its entirety. B As its name suggests, the American Rule is a “bedrock principle” of this country’s jurisprudence. Hardt v. Reliance Standard Life Ins. Co., 560 U.S. 242, 253 (2010). It provides that, in the United States, “[e]ach litigant pays his own attorney’s fees, win or lose.” Baker Botts L.L.P. v. ASARCO LLC, 135 S. Ct. 2158, 2164 (2015) (quoting Hardt, 560 U.S. at 253). The American Rule may only be displaced by an express grant from Congress. Id. And it...

Inventors' rights can be revoked through a controversial administrative process, the Supreme Court ruled by a seven-to-two margin on Tuesday, a move that promises to continue the trend of invalidation of hundreds of existing patents. The case, Oil States v. Greene's Energy, concerns an administrative tribunal called the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). As the Free Beacon has previously reported, the PTAB is responsible for reviewing patents whose validity have been challenged. The PTAB runs on a host of procedures alien to federal court proceedings: lower evidentiary standards, the ability of anyone to challenge a patent right, and a...

On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a ruling that patents owned by licensing company Smartflash, LLC are invalid. The finding kills Smartflash’s hope of restarting lawsuits against Apple, Google, and Samsung. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a set of rulings by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board which said that key claims in seven Smartflash patents relating to data storage technology were invalid because they described an abstract idea, not a patentable invention.

This article is on a jury decision about Apple infringing four patents that the patent office has already ruled are invalid. . . but that are being appealed to the appellate court which allowed this trial to go ahead anyway "because it was so far along." Link Only because of Bloomberg: Read the Article here.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson reported Tuesday on patents filed by Google that purport to show a bizarre plan to spy on you and parent your children. “In another patent application from September 2016, Google imagines how it could take control of your parenting, your relationship with your children,” Carlson explained. “Google’s smart home system could detect children near a liquor cabinet for example, or in their parents bedroom, infer that ‘mischief is occurring’ and deliver a verbal warning.” The Daily Caller co-founder said, “In another example, Google imagines a hypothetical child called Benjamin. Google’s cameras would be watching Benjamin at...

Challenges on both sides in Oil States oral arguments The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday morning in a case testing the legitimacy of a federal tribunal that has invalidated more than 19,000 patents during its brief existence. That case, Oil States v. Greene's Energy Group, concerns the constitutionality of a certain kind of review by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), an administrative law court established by the 2011 America Innovates Act. As the Free Beacon previously reported, the PTAB was set up to review and invalidate previously issued patents in the hopes of combatting "patent trolling." In...

Monday was Columbus Day, or as liberals have taken to calling, “Indigenous People’s Day.” Democrats love sowing division, blaming Europeans for all of the world’s ills, and elevating the status of Native Americans. Well, they usually do. When it’s a choice between a long-dead Italian guy and American Indians, the choice is easy. When the choice is between their own reelection and anything, everything else loses to self-preservation.Such is the case with Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill.One of my first jobs in Washington was as a health policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. While it may not sound exciting, it...

For decades, individual inventors were granted 25 percent or more of all U.S. patents. This creativity was the foundation of dozens of new industries, thousands of new companies and millions of new jobs. Yet beginning in the early 1980s, their portion of granted patents begin to drop like a rock in free fall. By 2015, individual inventors received only 5.8 percent. A decline so great and so fast has profound consequences and is not an accident or fluke. A useful place to begin the examination of this decline is a 1998 interview of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates who was asked,...