The Washington Times Opinion: Leadership needed to undo attacks on patent rights, by Rep. Jim Jordan and Joshua Wright
This post originally appeared in the The Washington Times on February 23, 2016.
Intellectual property rights are fundamental to the type of economic growth, competition and innovation that our economy requires to thrive and to increase the standard of living for all. Strong IP rights — and patents in particular — are critical to the success of ideas and products. This is true whether they come from the individual inventor in his garage or the largest company competing in the global marketplace.
Yet, the Obama administration’s antitrust agencies are attacking patent rights at a time when the stakes for the American economy are the highest. President Obama’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) have been leading a coordinated and sustained effort to devalue patents. This threatens the incentives for innovation and entrepreneurship that drive economic growth.