Legal Newsline: Conservative groups voice opposition to House patent reform bill, by Jessica Karmasek
This post originally appeared in Legal Newsline on August 10, 2015.
WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) – Last month, conservative groups began running ads aimed at stopping one of the more aggressive patent reform bills floating through Congress.
The groups — the American Conservative Union, Club for Growth and Eagle Forum — argue that the Innovation Act, or H.R. 9, will harm American inventors and small businesses while giving China a boost in the global marketplace.
The blitz began July 13 with full-page ads in both The Washington Post and The Washington Times, ahead of an expected U.S. House vote.
The ads read:
“H.R. 9: China loves it. Inventors fear it. The Founders would have hated it.
“H.R.9 is bad patent legislation. It treats universities, inventors and researchers as ‘trolls.’ It undermines American property rights set forth in Article 1 of the Constitution. And most harmfully, the bill could block patent holders from directly going after infringers who copy their inventions, making it virtually impossible to stop foreign knockoffs from China and elsewhere. Help keep our country’s competitive edge intact.”