IPWatchdog: More Bipartisan Support from Congress for Restoring 2019 SEP Policy Statement by Eileen McDermott
Two bipartisan members of congress, Representative Scott Peters (D-CA) and Representative Bill Posey (R-FL), sent a letter yesterday to President Joe Biden urging him to maintain the 2019 version of the Joint Department of Justice (DOJ)-U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)-National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Policy Statement on Remedies for Standards-Essential Patents Subject to Voluntary FRAND Commitments. A comment period on the latest iteration, which was issued in 2021, ended on February 4. The new version of the Statement came on the heels of President Joe Biden’s July 2021 Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, which asked the three agencies to review the 2019 statement.
In their letter, Posey and Peters argue that the heads of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), both of whom were only recently confirmed, should have a chance to weigh in on the draft. They also explain that the 2021 Draft Policy Statement undermines innovation “by unnecessarily curtailing the available remedies for patent infringement.” The remedies for SEPs should not be unique compared with remedies otherwise available under U.S. law in patent disputes, says the letter.