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Friday, November 30, 2018
Press Release: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office releases 2018-2022 Strategic Plan
Why Trump tariffs on China not stopping theft of trade secrets; USA TODAY, November 28, 2018
Why Trump tariffs on China not stopping theft of trade secrets
[Kip Currier: Interesting to see a flurry of articles in wide-ranging media about IP--particularly IP theft--placed front and center by the U.S. at the G20 Summit in Argentina (see here and here).
Yesterday I listened to a free webinar, "Modernizing NAFTA into a 21st Century Trade Agreement: The New USMCA & IP", from the ABA IP Law Section on IP-related aspects of the U.S., Mexico, Canada Agreement (USCMA); what was previously informally referred to as NAFTA 2.0.
Ms. Kira Alvarez, Esq., provided an excellent overview of trade agreements like NAFTA and insightful comparative analysis of key IP-focused sections of the TRIPS agreement, Trans-Pacific Partnership (which Donald Trump, fulfilling his campaign promise, opted the U.S. out of as one of the first acts of his presidency in January 2017), and the USCMA. Time will tell if the beefed-up protections for Trade Secrets in the USMCA are successful in curbing IP theft.]
"The theft of U.S. intellectual property, mostly by the
Chinese, costs the U.S. an estimated $225 billion to $600 billion a
year and represents “an assault the likes of which the world has never
seen,” analyst Richard Ellings said.
“You can’t
find a company that hasn’t been assaulted, and half of them don’t even
know it,” said Ellings, executive director of the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property.
President Donald Trump cited China’s theft of intellectual property as one of his reasons for slapping $200 billion in tariffs on
Chinese imports earlier this year. Tariffs, intellectual property theft
and the forced transfer of intellectual property will be among the
topics of discussion when Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet
over dinner Saturday during the G-20 summit in Argentina, White House officials said.
"The
rest of the world knows full well about the issues of IP theft and
forced transfers of technology," Trump's top economic adviser Larry
Kudlow said. "This idea that other countries are not with us is just not
true. It's time for a change in their behavior.""
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Intellectual Property to Take Center Stage as Trump and Xi Meet; The New York Times, November 28, 2018
Alan Rappeport, The New York Times;
"When President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China sit down to talk trade this week at the Group of 20 summit meeting, their negotiations are likely to be framed by a highly charged topic: the White House’s insistence that China routinely steals American technology and intellectual property."
"When President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China sit down to talk trade this week at the Group of 20 summit meeting, their negotiations are likely to be framed by a highly charged topic: the White House’s insistence that China routinely steals American technology and intellectual property."
Navy Official: Concerns About Intellectual Property Rights Becoming More 'Acute'; National Defense, NDIA's Business & Technology Magazine, November 29, 2018
Connie Lee, National Defense, NDIA's Business & Technology Magazine;
"Capt. Samuel Pennington, major program manager for surface training systems, said the fear of losing data rights can sometimes make companies reluctant to work with the government.
“We get feedback sometimes where they’re not willing to bid on a contract where we have full data rights,” he said. “Industry [is] not going to do that because they have their secret sauce and they don’t want to release it.”
Pennington said having IP rights would allow the Defense Department to more easily modernize and sustain equipment.
“Our initiative is to get as much data rights, or buy a new product that has open architecture to the point where [the] data rights that we do have are sufficient, where we can recompete that down the road,” he said. This would prevent the Navy from relying on the original manufacturer for future work on the system, he noted.
The issue is also being discussed on Capitol Hill, Merritt added. The fiscal year 2018 National Defense Authorization Act requires the Pentagon to develop policy on the acquisition or licensing of intellectual property. Additionally, the NDAA requires the department to negotiate a price for technical data rights of major weapon systems."
Navy Official: Concerns About Intellectual Property Rights Becoming More 'Acute'
"Capt. Samuel Pennington, major program manager for surface training systems, said the fear of losing data rights can sometimes make companies reluctant to work with the government.
“We get feedback sometimes where they’re not willing to bid on a contract where we have full data rights,” he said. “Industry [is] not going to do that because they have their secret sauce and they don’t want to release it.”
Pennington said having IP rights would allow the Defense Department to more easily modernize and sustain equipment.
“Our initiative is to get as much data rights, or buy a new product that has open architecture to the point where [the] data rights that we do have are sufficient, where we can recompete that down the road,” he said. This would prevent the Navy from relying on the original manufacturer for future work on the system, he noted.
The issue is also being discussed on Capitol Hill, Merritt added. The fiscal year 2018 National Defense Authorization Act requires the Pentagon to develop policy on the acquisition or licensing of intellectual property. Additionally, the NDAA requires the department to negotiate a price for technical data rights of major weapon systems."
IP is the G20 Issue; Forbes, November 29, 2018
Lorenzo Montanari, Forbes; IP is the G20 Issue
"The official priorities at the G20 Summit in Argentina include worrying about soil erosion, mainstreaming public-private partnerships, and voicing anxiety over whether government run schools can equip kids with employable skills.While those certainly are complex issues, they miss the urgency of a real global crises that President Trump has brought to the table.
The new agenda is intellectual property, intellectual property, and intellectual property.
President Trump has not shied away from the complex issue that Obama and other world leaders preferred to ignore. At the summit the United States, Mexico, and Canada are expected to sign the new USMCA trade agreement- an agreement that has the strongest IP protections than any other trade agreement in history."
"The official priorities at the G20 Summit in Argentina include worrying about soil erosion, mainstreaming public-private partnerships, and voicing anxiety over whether government run schools can equip kids with employable skills.While those certainly are complex issues, they miss the urgency of a real global crises that President Trump has brought to the table.
The new agenda is intellectual property, intellectual property, and intellectual property.
President Trump has not shied away from the complex issue that Obama and other world leaders preferred to ignore. At the summit the United States, Mexico, and Canada are expected to sign the new USMCA trade agreement- an agreement that has the strongest IP protections than any other trade agreement in history."
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
Did Uber Steal Google’s Intellectual Property?; The New Yorker, October 22, 2018 Issue
Charles Duhigg, The New Yorker; Did Uber Steal Google’s Intellectual Property?
"Levandowski, for his part, has been out of work since he was fired by Uber. It’s hard to feel much sympathy for him, though. He’s still extremely wealthy. He left Google with files that nearly everyone agrees he should not have walked off with, even if there is widespread disagreement about how much they’re worth. Levandowski seemed constantly ready to abandon his teammates and threaten defection, often while working on an angle to enrich himself. He is a brilliant mercenary, a visionary opportunist, a man seemingly without loyalty. He has helped build a technology that might transform how the world functions, and he seems inclined to personally profit from that transformation as much as possible. In other words, he is an exemplar of Silicon Valley ethics.
Levandowski is upset that some people have cast him as the bad guy. “I reject the notion that I did something unethical,” he said. “Was I trying to compete with them? Sure.” But, he added, “I’m not a thief, and I’m not dishonest.” Other parents sometimes shun him when he drops his kids off at school, and he has grown tired of people taking photographs of him when he walks through airports. But he is confident that his notoriety will subside. Although he no longer owns the technology that he brought to Google and Uber, plenty of valuable information remains inside his head, and he has a lot of new ideas."
"Levandowski, for his part, has been out of work since he was fired by Uber. It’s hard to feel much sympathy for him, though. He’s still extremely wealthy. He left Google with files that nearly everyone agrees he should not have walked off with, even if there is widespread disagreement about how much they’re worth. Levandowski seemed constantly ready to abandon his teammates and threaten defection, often while working on an angle to enrich himself. He is a brilliant mercenary, a visionary opportunist, a man seemingly without loyalty. He has helped build a technology that might transform how the world functions, and he seems inclined to personally profit from that transformation as much as possible. In other words, he is an exemplar of Silicon Valley ethics.
Levandowski is upset that some people have cast him as the bad guy. “I reject the notion that I did something unethical,” he said. “Was I trying to compete with them? Sure.” But, he added, “I’m not a thief, and I’m not dishonest.” Other parents sometimes shun him when he drops his kids off at school, and he has grown tired of people taking photographs of him when he walks through airports. But he is confident that his notoriety will subside. Although he no longer owns the technology that he brought to Google and Uber, plenty of valuable information remains inside his head, and he has a lot of new ideas."
Do You Have Concerns about Plan S? Then You Must be an Irresponsible, Privileged, Conspiratorial Hypocrite; The Scholarly Kitchen, November 26, 2018
Rick Anderson, The Scholarly Kitchen; Do You Have Concerns about Plan S? Then You Must be an Irresponsible, Privileged, Conspiratorial Hypocrite
"Ultimately, though, what is most concerning about Plan S is not the behavior of those hell-bent on defending it by any means necessary. That’s just par for the course. More important is the way in which researchers themselves — the people whose work and whose freedom to choose will be directly affected by its implementation — seem to have been excluded from the process of formulating it. This shouldn’t be surprising, I guess, given the disdain in which authors and researchers are apparently held by Plan S’s creators. After all, as Science Europe’s Robert-Jan Smits puts it: “Why do we need Plan S? Because researchers are irresponsible.”
There you have it. The freedom to choose how to publish isn’t for everyone; it’s only for those who are “responsible” — which is to say, those who agree with Plan S."
"Ultimately, though, what is most concerning about Plan S is not the behavior of those hell-bent on defending it by any means necessary. That’s just par for the course. More important is the way in which researchers themselves — the people whose work and whose freedom to choose will be directly affected by its implementation — seem to have been excluded from the process of formulating it. This shouldn’t be surprising, I guess, given the disdain in which authors and researchers are apparently held by Plan S’s creators. After all, as Science Europe’s Robert-Jan Smits puts it: “Why do we need Plan S? Because researchers are irresponsible.”
There you have it. The freedom to choose how to publish isn’t for everyone; it’s only for those who are “responsible” — which is to say, those who agree with Plan S."
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