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[(Sahil, reporter for NBC News covering Capitol Hill, elections and the intersection of politics and public policy in Washington.) “‘It’s embarrassing’: Republicans worry they have no achievements to run on in 2024”, NBC News, 1-22-24, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/s-embarrassing-republicans-worry-no-achievements-run-2024-rcna131902]//LR

WASHINGTON — When Congress began the new year, Rep. Andy Biggs gave a television interview and made a startling confession: House Republicans have done nothing they can run on. “We have nothing. In my opinion, we have nothing to go out there and campaign on,” the Arizona Republican said on the conservative network Newsmax. “It’s embarrassing.” Anchor Chris Salcedo responded with a bemused chuckle. “I know,” he said. “The Republican Party in the Congress majority has zero accomplishments.” The exchange captured a dynamic that looms over Republican lawmakers heading into the 2024 election: They’ve passed little substantive legislation since winning the majority in 2022 and struggled to do the basics of governing with a Democratic-led Senate. Their first year was instead marked by fractiousness and chaos, complicating the party’s pitch to voters this fall. The challenge is accentuated by likely GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump making “retribution” against his enemies, rather than shared policy goals, the centerpiece of his comeback bid as he continues to spread fabricated claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. With 10 months until Election Day, Republicans still have a few opportunities to salvage what has been a historically unproductive congressional session and pass new laws in the divided government. A spending deal between House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., gives the GOP a chance to achieve spending cuts. A potential Senate immigration deal gives them an opportunity to toughen asylum and border laws. And a bipartisan tax bill that overwhelmingly passed through committee on Friday presents a rare opening to deliver tax breaks for GOP backers in the business community. Yet none of those measures are guaranteed to become law. Right-wing members, including Biggs, are rebelling against some of them for being insufficiently conservative. The emerging immigration bill’s prospects may hinge on Trump, who is seeking to wield chaos at the border as a weapon against President Joe Biden in the general election. The tax bill faces some skepticism from Senate Republicans and fierce opposition from the business-aligned Wall Street Journal editorial board, which complained that it would “give Democrats a huge policy victory” on the child credit. “Republicans haven’t done much in the 118th Congress, and in their scramble to compensate they may now do real policy harm,” the paper wrote. Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., the former acting speaker, said Johnson “should seek wider counsel than the loudest people who line up in the queue” — referring to far-right members who oppose compromises with the Senate — warning that the GOP could suffer politically without some legislative victories. “If we keep extending the pain and creating more suffering, we will pay the price at the ballot box. But if we can get on with governance, and get the best policy wins we can, then you can open-field this thing,” McHenry said. “But at this point, we are sucking wind because we can’t get past the main object in the road. Once we get past that main object, then it’s the president’s performance on the economy, it’s the president’s performance on national security.” “We need to get the hell out of the way, cut the best deals we can get,” he said. “And then get on with the political year.” ‘They can’t pass an agenda’ Democrats intend to highlight the majority’s thin record this fall. “I think people are paying attention to that,” Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said in an interview. “This is clearly a Republican conference where the only thing that brings them together are impeachments and censures. That’s what they’re about because they can’t pass an agenda. They can’t do anything substantively to help the American people. And so we plan on making that an issue throughout the year.” Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, R-Fla., a senior appropriator, said there’s still time for Republicans to bag some victories. “If we can do the tax bill, and if we can do the appropriation bills ... if we can do something to actually strengthen the border ... then I think that would be a highly, highly, highly successful Congress,” he said. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., who represents one of 17 GOP districts that Biden won in 2020, praised the tax bill and said he wants to fund Ukraine and Israel, help Taiwan and secure the border. “I hope there’s enough adults in the room that are willing to focus on progress rather than purity,” Fitzpatrick said. GOP senators concur. “It would be really nice if they could hang their hat on some accomplishment,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., who previously served three terms in the House. Cramer said the record of accomplishments since Republicans took the House majority has so far been “damn thin.” He warned that if conservatives scuttle an immigration deal, it could hurt swing-district GOP members who would benefit from achievements as they fight for political survival in competitive districts. “It would be ironic if the thing that prevented them from being able to hang their hat on a good immigration or border security policy would be the election because it could be the only thing that might save some of them,” Cramer said. “The whole ‘burden of governing’ thing that I was hopeful would weigh heavily enough on them to get serious hasn’t worked so far.”

(The Center Square) – Foreign policy is an infrequent subject in U.S. Senate campaigns. In Michigan’s Senate election, however, tough talk on the Chinese Communist Party is growing on the campaign trail.

Michigan, a key swing state in 2024’s general elections, will vote this year to elect a successor to retiring Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow. Though the primary election is Aug. 6, the race has crystallized around Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin and former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers – the leading candidates for their parties’ nominations – who have both attacked the CCP with a frequency unusual among this year’s Senate campaigns.

NEW YORK -- Both Democratic and Republican U.S. Senate candidates are increasing their criticism of China, at times using Beijing to attack opponents, as a core part of this year's campaign for control of the legislative chamber.

American voters pick members of Congress alongside the president in November. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents hold a narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate, but Republicans could retake control of the upper house with a net gain of two seats among the 34 that will be contested this year.

When Congress recently began considering banning TikTok in the U.S. because of concerns that the app’s Beijing parent company would share private information with the Chinese government, the social media giant borrowed a page from Google’s playbook.

Earlier this year, the company sent notifications to a carefully selected portion of their 170 million users informing them of the move in Congress to shut down the app. The alerts targeted TikTok users in the districts of key lawmakers, especially conservative Republicans who favored the ban, and asked them to call their elected representatives and tell them to oppose the legislation.

It took a marathon, 29-hour session in June 2021 for the full House Judiciary Committee to approve a package of six bills aimed at regulating Big Tech. One would have barred Google, Amazon and Apple from steering or requiring customers to use their products and services rather than those of competitors. Another would have limited how Google and Facebook monetize the data they collect from users to earn revenue from advertisers. And another would have prevented tech giants from buying up nascent competitors, as Facebook did with Instagram and Google with Waze and YouTube. And if those efforts proved insufficient to prevent the tech giants from using their dominance in one market to win dominance in related markets, courts would be authorized to break them up.

Yet while each of those bills were approved by bipartisan majorities that spanned the ideological spectrum from Democrat Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) on the left to Republican Matt Gaetz (Fla.) on the right, Buck and Cicilline were already running into resistance.

In less than six months, Americans will head to the polls. The stakes are high, and given the controversy surrounding our last two presidential elections, it’s more important than ever for states to ensure the integrity of their democratic processes, so that the people’s voice can be heard loud and clear. Thankfully, numerous states have passed reforms to address vulnerabilities and improve the integrity of their elections, as documented by the Heritage Foundation’s . Yet election integrity is threatened by another danger: the censorship and manipulation of political information and opinions by large tech platforms. This isn’t just a threat to free speech; it’s election interference at its worst. Silicon Valley giants use powerful reactive and proactive methods of social manipulation to shift public opinion and influence election outcomes. Reactive methods usually involve censoring or deplatforming voices out of step with progressive values. >>> One of the most infamous examples is Facebook and Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 presidential election. According to a McLaughlin and Associates poll, that suppression almost certainly influenced the outcome of the election. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Other companies like Google use to suppress targeted websites and communications. Facebook even has a covert whitelist called “XCheck” it employs to give certain favored high-profile users a pass on its content policies. Large platforms also use proactive methods to push users toward content or actions that further Big Tech’s political agenda. A in 2018 revealed that the company can personalize search results and feeds to reinforce its values. Google, along with other platforms, appears to be doing just that in the name of voter “education and mobilization.” While this might sound benevolent, it hides a dark secret: These platforms control which users receive election-related information through their services and can even target certain users with go-vote reminders. Per research by Robert Epstein, Google targeted go-vote reminders to liberal users during the 2020 Georgia U.S. Senate runoff—presumably to boost turnout for Democrats. Facebook has also sent out targeted go-vote reminders since at least 2008. The platform found that reminders increased the overall number of votes cast by 340,000 in 2010. Taken together, Epstein finds that political bias reinforced through search algorithms, “suggested search” features, AI chat bots and targeted go-vote reminders has a significant cumulative effect on user attitudes and voting behavior. If observed levels of liberal bias are present on major platforms ahead of an election, they could shift millions of votes to Silicon Valley’s preferred candidates. These manipulative practices likely violate state and federal election laws. Federal law bans corporations from using their resources to support candidates for federal office. To the extent they engage in independent expenditures, those have to be reported. The same is true in many states that outright ban political giving—or “in kind” contributions—or require corporations to disclose it. Manipulating Internet searches or user feeds to ensure that results, ads or opinions disproportionately favor one political candidate or party is akin to making a political contribution.

For the majority of State Affairs meeting, the committee called in several experts to testify on how they believe Big Tech companies threaten election security.

Dan Schneider, the vice president of Media Research Center, an organization that documents perceived media bias and censorship of Big Tech, said that through their studies, they found that Google favors creating algorithms that are biased.

[(John, covered tech policy for the Wall Street Journal and has written extensively about the political backlash against big tech and the antitrust investigations into the companies.) “Big Tech Has Spent $36 million on Ads to Torpedo Antitrust Bill.”, WSJ, 6-9-22, https://www.wsj.com/articles/big-tech-has-spent-36-million-on-ads-to-torpedo-antitrust-bill-11654767000]//LR

WASHINGTON—Advocacy groups bankrolled by big technology companies have poured at least $36.4 million into TV and internet ads opposing antitrust legislation that would bar dominant tech platforms from favoring their own products and services, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. By comparison, groups supporting the antitrust legislation have spent about $193,000, according to a Journal analysis of data collected by AdImpact, an ad-tracking service. Much of the tech industry spending—$13.7 million, or almost 40%—has come since May 1, ahead of a possible floor vote this summer on the bill, which has bipartisan support. The spending marks one of the biggest ad campaigns by the powerful tech industry in recent years and reflects its fear of the disruptive potential of tougher antitrust laws. “This is without question one of the most significant campaigns the association has embarked on in recent years, because it’s one of the most radical policy proposals to regulate a leading sector of the U.S. economy,” said Matt Schruers, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which has spent more than $23 million, the most of any group. CCIA didn’t disclose which companies provided funding for its ad campaign, saying only that “the association is funding the campaign.” CCIA lists Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook among its members. CCIA’s ads have included mentions of Amazon as well as Google and “your phone.” The bill targets dominant tech platforms, including Amazon’s e-commerce site, Google’s search engine, Apple’s App Store and Facebook. Those companies have been working for months to stop or alter the bill, deploying teams of lobbyists and top executives to Washington. The $36.4 million spent by groups opposing the legislation dates back to Jan. 1, 2021. Google’s voluntary disclosure of its memberships for 2021 includes CCIA. Amazon also disclosed that it made payments of $10,000 or more to CCIA in 2021. Many of the ads are running in lawmakers’ home states and districts. They aim to convince voters that easing antitrust standards would contribute to inflation, weaken America’s hand versus China or hurt consumers and small businesses by disrupting popular online services such as Amazon Prime or Google Maps. Sponsors led by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) and Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) held a press conference on Wednesday to push back on the campaign, saying it is distorting the bill’s impacts. “We’re confronted with these big tech companies spending tens of millions of dollars on ads and also on front groups to spread falsehoods about our bill,” Mr. Grassley said. “Obviously they want to protect the status quo, which allows them to expand their influence.” Ms. Klobuchar insisted the bill has the necessary votes to succeed on the Senate floor. “We have momentum despite all the money being spent against us,” she said. The bill passed a Senate committee earlier this year on a bipartisan basis, although some supporters said at the time that they wanted changes. It “is specifically designed to target a small number of specific companies, most of which are headquartered in my home state,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said at the time. Supporters, including some smaller technology companies, contend the platforms’ dominant position gives them unchecked power to influence the fate of other businesses. They say restricting the platforms’ conduct would carry significant benefits. The bill was endorsed by the Biden administration’s Justice Department. Amazon, Google and Apple say the legislation would make it harder to offer popular services, and that it is fair for e-marketplaces, search engines and app stores to profit off their own innovations. Meta Platforms hasn’t taken a public position on the Senate legislation, and a spokesman declined to comment. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) hasn’t publicly committed to holding a vote on the bill. However, Mr. Schumer recently told Ms. Klobuchar and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) that he intends to bring it up for a vote on the Senate floor early this summer, a Democratic aide familiar with the conversation said. The ad-campaign spending has largely been divided among industry trade groups such as CCIA and the Consumer Technology Association, as well as conservative-leaning groups such as Taxpayers Protection Alliance and NetChoice. “Washington politicians have a law that could break Prime’s guaranteed two-day free delivery and threaten our fragile economic recovery,” said one ad by CCIA, referring to Amazon’s fee-based membership program. “Tell your senators, don’t break our Prime.” CCIA touts research suggesting that its ad campaign already has cut into public support for the antitrust crackdown. Other industry-backed ads focus on what opponents say would be the bill’s impact on small businesses and national security. “The left’s radical liberal bill would take away the digital tools small businesses rely on, empower China to beat America in the race for new technologies, and increase the risk of cyberattacks. Why would Senate conservatives support this dangerous bill?” says an ad from Taxpayers Protection Alliance. Tech companies are hoping to cement opposition to the bill among Republicans, who generally oppose toughening of antitrust laws but have often complained that major tech platforms censor conservative voices. “Conservative politicians and groups backing this legislation due to understandable grievances with certain tech companies are making an incalculable error,” said Patrick Hedger, executive director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance. It has run most of its $7.4 million total advertising in the last six weeks, the Journal’s analysis showed. One state that industry allies have targeted is Texas, according to a person familiar with the matter. Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) “is still reviewing the bill, because he continues to be concerned about anticompetitive conduct by some big tech companies towards American consumers, and in many instances conservatives,” a Cruz spokesman said. The state’s other senator, Republican Sen. John Cornyn, opposes the legislation, citing the potential national security consequences. “The last thing we should be doing is weakening America’s ability to compete in a global economy,” he said at a hearing earlier this year. The bill’s supporters say the proposals would boost economic competitiveness without preventing platforms from offering popular services. The ads are also running in states where incumbent Senate Democrats are facing re-election fights, such as New Hampshire, home to Sen. Maggie Hassan, who hasn’t taken a public position on the legislation. A spokesperson said Ms. Hassan is reviewing the legislation and “has a strong record of standing up to some of the worst practices of Big Tech.” Tech companies “know that if the bills came to the floor for a vote, they would pass, and so big tech lobby groups are scrambling to try to prevent that from happening,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, one of the groups that has run ads supporting the legislation. The group’s funding comes in part from the Economic Security Project, an entity backed by Chris Hughes, the billionaire former Facebook executive.

Love the products, hate the companies — that’s the way many Americans think about Big Tech. Which is why it looked like a good bet when Congress convened in 2021 that Washington might finally rein in the companies that many believe have grown too big, too rich and too powerful — even as their products and services have become ever more indispensable to our lives. Here, it seemed, was the rare issue on which both Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, could agree.

In the end, however, Congress failed to act. And in that failure is a case study of how Congress has lost its ability to address the most pressing problems facing the country.

Some of the most vulnerable Democratic Senate incumbents up for re-election in November have looked to highlight their disagreements with President Biden ahead of the pivotal matchups.

"'Distancing' from a party brand is a time-honored tradition in Congress," explained Jacob Neiheisel, associate professor of political science at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Democrats faced a challenging path to holding their Senate majority even before President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance and the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump – and they still do. But this year’s Democratic candidates, many of them well-known incumbents, have so far been able to create some separation from the top of the ticket. The question going forward, regardless of what Biden does, is whether they can sustain it.

Nine of the top 10 seats on CNN’s latest ranking of the Senate seats most likely to flip are held by Democrats (or independents who caucus with them). And assuming Republicans flip West Virginia, where Sen. Joe Manchin is retiring, the GOP just needs to win the White House or pick up one more Senate seat to win the majority.

Unfortunately, the work of pioneering medical researchers in Montana and across the nation is under threat, thanks to a controversial measure proposed by certain countries at the World Trade Organization.

The World Trade Organization's member nations — including the United States — could decide to waive patent protections for Covid-19 tests and therapeutics. While the WTO refrained from greenlighting this proposal at its most recent annual meeting, the Biden administration has yet to publicly condemn the waiver — meaning the issue could still arise in the future.

A new poll finds that 60% of US voters want President Joe Biden to endorse the motion by more than 100 lower- and middle-income countries to temporarily waive patent protections on Covid-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization. Only 28% disagreed.

The survey, carried out by Data for Progress and the Progressive International, shows a super majority of 72% registered Democrats want Biden to temporarily waive patent barriers to speed vaccine roll out and reduce costs for developing nations. Even registered Republicans support the action by margin of 50% in favor to 36% opposed.

[(Paul, served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit from 1988 to his retirement in 2010, and as its chief judge from 2004 to 2010.) “Big Tech Has a Patent Violation Problem.”, Harvard Business Review, 8-5-22, https://hbr.org/2022/08/big-tech-has-a-patent-violation-problem]//LR

For example, in January, the United States International Trade Commission, a quasi-judicial body that oversees trade enforcement matters, found that Google infringed on multiple patents held by the speaker maker Sonos. The commission gave Google 60 days to implement software updates to remove the stolen technology or else face a ban from importing a range of its products — including its Google Home smart speakers and Pixel phone — and selling them here in America. Google complied, at the cost of removing features and reducing the functionality of the products. This was just one in a string of similar legal defeats that Google has suffered. In February, a jury in Texas ruled that Google’s Nest Thermostat infringed on a patent held by EcoFactor, and ordered Google to pay $20 million. In a $26 million verdict from November 2021, a federal jury found Google’s YouTube platform in violation of a patent held by VideoShare LLC. Google isn’t alone, however. Other Big Tech firms have infringed on smaller competitors’ technologies in recent years, and have also faced reprimands and hefty financial penalties from courts and the International Trade Commission. In August of 2021, a jury ordered Apple to pay $300 million in damages to Optis Wireless Technology for infringing on that firm’s patents. Apple similarly owes VirnetX, an internet security software firm, over $570 million for infringement. And Cisco and Centripetal Networks, a Herndon, Virginia, startup, will return to the district court to litigate whether Cisco infringed Centripetal cybersecurity patents. Cisco previously owed nearly $2 billion to Centripetal for infringement, only for that ruling to be tossed due to a judge’s minor conflict. These judgements have shown Big Tech that infringement doesn’t come without legal consequences — but this solution might not have teeth for much longer. Instead of simply stopping their infringement and licensing rivals’ technologies fairly, major tech firms — including Apple and Google — are now pursuing a legal workaround. They’re trying to make it easier to invalidate rivals’ patents by pushing for legislation that would weaken IP protections. After all, if there are no patents, there can be no infringement. Business as Usual For years, executives at major tech firms have seen these legal judgments as just a cost of doing business. Damages for lost cases, even when stretching into the hundreds of millions, are a drop in the bucket for companies like Apple, which reported $365.8 billion in revenue in 2021. Patent theft, sadly, is a rational strategy for corporate behemoths seeking to entrench their own dominance and neutralize a threat from an emerging startup. After all, it’s cheaper to steal than to license smaller firms’ technologies. Just over a decade ago, this strategy became even more viable. In 2011 — in part due to the urging of tech lobbyists — Congress created a tribunal within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) called the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), which was ostensibly created to provide a faster, less expensive way to settle patent disputes outside of the courts. Instead, it opened up a new avenue for Big Tech gamesmanship of the patent system. Now, deep-pocketed tech firms could simultaneously challenge smaller rivals’ patents in two arenas — in the courts and at the PTAB, where, in addition, they could file multiple and serial challenges against the same patent. This gave major tech companies a major advantage. In many cases, after being sued by smaller rivals, large tech companies petitioned the PTAB to strike down patents that courts would potentially uphold and find tech behemoths guilty of infringing. Often the PTAB would do just that: It has at least partially invalidated 84% of the patents it has adjudicated in a final written decision. There are three main reasons for this: 1) the Board’s evidentiary standard is lower than in court, 2) repeat challenges are allowed — by the defendant, of course, but also by anyone who wants to challenge the validity of the patent for any reason — and 3) patent owners are burdened with about $500,000 per challenge, which Big Tech companies can afford, but startups often cannot.

Big Tech companies have been the biggest users of the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), filing hundreds of petitions challenging the patents of smaller innovators since the Board was established in 2012.

Big Tech infringers like the PTAB because it provides them with an additional tool to drag out infringement disputes and increase the cost of enforcing patents for smaller innovators.

The pharmaceutical industry spent a record $92 million lobbying the federal government during the first three months of 2021, putting Big Pharma on track to break its annual spending record for a second year in a row. The intense lobbying comes as countries across the world are demanding access to COVID vaccine technology and many Democrats are pushing to expand Medicare and lower prescription drug prices.

Big Pharma’s lobbying expenditures represent a 6.3 percent increase in spending over the first quarter of 2020, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Drug companies would go on to collectively spend more money on lobbying in 2020 than ever before. Meanwhile, the COVID pandemic spread across the globe, and the United States and other wealthy nations poured billions of dollars into vaccine development and distribution through deals and partnerships with private pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms.

Still, actions in the legislative realm can have short-term effects on fundraising.

Take 2017, for example. Democratic legislators were pushing for a bill to rein in the costs of insulin by requiring companies to disclose certain profits and costs associated with the production and sale of diabetes drugs. Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval vetoed this legislation before signing a similar bill that he said would better ensure that insulin prices do not increase.

Large pharmaceutical companies have continually engaged in the strategic accumulation of patents to restrict patient access to more affordable drugs by delaying the entry of generic options into the market. While some of the additional patents represent true incremental innovation, many are deployed strategically to preserve a company’s monopoly rights on the original discovery. All in all, the tactics used are not new or useful, they are simply a way for Big Pharma to maintain their drug monopolies and continue charging American consumers more for drugs than they could if they had competition in the market.

Take Namenda, a drug produced by Forest Laboratories used to treat the confusion associated with Alzheimer’s Disease. Forest Laboratories faced generic competition on Namenda starting in 2015. Instead of competing with a generic drug on the market, the company responded by changing its formulation of Namenda from a twice-daily pill to a once-daily version. This new version was patented with protection on the product extending to 2029. The actions of Forest Laboratories were a clear example of the company’s attempt to game the patent system. In fact, they were successfully sued by the State of New York for attempting to block patients from having a choice between the twice-daily and once-daily pills and were forced to settle with New York and abandon their efforts.

On one side of the coin, the 101 Decisions have been positive in providing an avenue for tech companies to invalidate patents asserted against them by nonpracticing entities (NPEs). This positive effect was discussed in the Hennepin Lawyer early last year.[5] Briefly, NPEs, or “trolls” as they are often called, are entities that typically do not market their own products, but rather obtain ownership in patented technologies and then license those technologies to others.[6] While being an NPE is not inherently “bad” and the licensing of patented technologies falls squarely within the rights of patent holders, many NPEs have made a practice of accumulating sizable patent portfolios that are often heavily concentrated in computer technology. These NPEs then demand tech companies pay licensing fees for these technologies to avoid the risk of patent infringement litigation.[7] Many of the patent assets of these NPEs for computer technology were issued in the 1990s and were granted with extremely broad claims for processes that are essentially the recitation of an abstract idea, mathematical formula, or law of nature with the addition of requiring a computer to execute the process.[8] Due to these overly broad patents and the low threshold requirements for subject matter eligibility, for many years NPEs have successfully obtained large settlements from tech companies who sought to avoid costly and uncertain litigation. Even if a tech company decided to defend the lawsuit and won, the tech company was out significant funds for defending the costly litigation, as there was no mechanism available to the defending tech company for swiftly and cost-effectively invalidating a granted patent.[9] One thing that is certain, however, is that many of the computer software technology patents considered by the Federal Circuit have been invalidated as a result of the 101 Decisions.[20]  Therefore, while the high rate of invalidity findings of NPE’s patents has been a welcome boon for tech companies, the uncertainty regarding the validity of their own patents has been an unwelcome consequence. 

[(Annelise, Reporter for Bloomberg Law.) “Big Tech, Retailers Ask Senators to Kill Patent Eligibility Bill.”, Bloomberg Law, 3-11-24, https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/big-tech-retailers-ask-senators-to-kill-patent-eligibility-bill]//LR

Groups representing Alphabet Inc.‘s Google, Amazon.com Inc., and other large tech and retail companies sent a letter pleading with Senate Judiciary leaders to vote against a bill they say will turn the US patent system upside down and cripple innovative businesses. The proposed Patent Eligibility Restoration Act, or PERA, would overrule over a century of legal principles and allow the patenting of much of daily life, according to a letter sent Monday to Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and ranking member Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) by industry groups. Signatories included the High Tech Innovators Alliance, Electronic Frontier Foundation, National Retail Federation, and others. The bill takes aim at a test established in 2014 by the US Supreme Court in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International that limits what qualifies for patent protection. The current system mostly excludes inventions covering natural phenomena, laws of nature, or abstract ideas. That framework has led to “unpredictable business outcomes” and “threatens to unseat the United States as the world’s innovation leader,” said the bill’s author Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) at a January hearing. The proposal would prohibit patent protection for several set categories, including a “mathematical formula” or “mental process.” But it would make “any process that cannot be practically performed without the use of a machine” or a “manufacture” eligible. “Any business method, legal agreement, media content, or even games and entertainment could be patented so long as the invention required some use of computers or electronic communications,” the letter alleged. This would cause “crippling litigation” against innovative technology companies, manufacturers, and main street businesses, it said. The groups cited court decisions invalidating patents that were asserted against hundreds of companies, saying such ineligible patents would exist under PERA and inflict damage on the US economy. Other limitations on patentabiity, like obviousness, aren’t enough to prevent bad patents, according to the letter. “It would be a mistake to assume that other statutory provisions would play the same role if Congress were to neuter” the existing patent-eligibility inquiry.