Red State: The Republican Congress Should Protect Innovators, by Erik Telford
This post originally appeared in Red State on July 7, 2015.
You can only talk about so many “urgent,” “pressing,” or “huge” problems facing America before the rhetoric starts to wear thin and expose your true values, and that is exactly what is happening to President Obama in his call to overhaul our Constitutionally enshrined patent system. But Republican leaders in Congress are taking the bait, pushing for a vote within the next few weeks on legislation that will reward Obama’s corporate cronies, harm American innovation, and hand a major victory to our economic competitors like China.
Obama has said that the issue is one of the “biggest problems” our nation is facing. And while there may be plenty of bigger fish for our Commander in Chief to fry right now, that hasn’t stopped him from manufacturing an alleged crisis in our technology sector and pushing Congress to overhaul the patent system.
It should come as no surprise that Google, Obama’s top corporate crony, is one of the companies that stands to benefit most from an overhaul of the patent system. With the Obama administration in its pocket, Google has put the full might of its formidable lobbying resources into pressuring Republican Congressional leadership to act quickly. But Republicans should beware. If Google succeeds in getting Congress to support its agenda, we should not expect the results to benefit America innovators. One Google-backed policy proposal supported by Obama, for example, would have classified leading research institutions like MIT as “patent trolls.”