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[Kevin, 7-6-24, NJ News, “Take that, Biden doubters: New swing state poll shows media is wrong about race vs. Trump”, , accessed 7-14-24] nikoglenn

Maybe, in the end, the doom-selling media and doubters in the Democratic party will be wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time. Turns out, Democrats and voters in swing states are still ridin’ with Biden.

The fundamental reason high-tech solutions won’t save us from climate change is simple: time. Time is by far the most important variable – and the one thing technology can’t give us more of. Climate change is a cumulative problem.

The warming we see now is caused by the year-by-year, decade-by-decade build-up of greenhouse gas pollution in Earth’s atmosphere. The severe climate disruptions of 2023 – the record temperatures, storms, fires and other disasters – weren’t caused by 2023’s emissions alone. Nor were they caused by those of 2022. They were caused by our long-term, cumulative emissions, building up over many, many years.

[Kristoffer, 12-5-2023, Inside Climate News, “At COP28, More and More Scientists Say Overshooting 1.5 Degrees Is ‘Inevitable’,” https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05122023/todays-climate-cop28-scientists-say-overshooting-1-5-degrees-is-inevitable/#:~:text=Their%20main%20finding%2C%20they%20said,expand%20their%20plans%20to%20build, accessed 7-10-2024, CM]

But out of the public’s eye, many top climate diplomats and leading scientists have believed for years that the chance of achieving 1.5 degrees of warming is slim to nothing. The planet has already warmed about 1.3 degrees, and a growing number of researchers and thought leaders in the climate movement are now stating that belief bluntly as negotiations begin in earnest at the U.N. climate conference.

While this has shielded humanity and terrestrial ecosystems, the effects in the ocean are alarming: unprecedented warming, acidification, deoxygenation, and a host of related changes that further undermine the stability of our climate. Decreasing emissions must remain an urgent priority of the global community, but the problem is this: Even if we stopped all emissions today, existing carbon pollution in the air will continue to warm the planet to devastating levels.

The Antarctic ice sheet is melting in a new, worrying way that scientific models used to project future sea level rise have not taken into account, suggesting current projections could be significantly underestimating the problem, according to a new study.

Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey found that warm ocean water is seeping beneath the ice sheet at its “grounding line” — the point at which the ice rises from the seabed and starts to float — causing accelerated melting which could lead to a tipping point, according to the report published Tuesday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

[Newsweek, article by Jeff Young, interviewed Tom Steyer, Clean energy philanthropist, investor, political player, 7-8-24, “Billionaire Investor Tom Steyer Says Clean Tech Will Win the 'Climate War',” https://www.newsweek.com/billionaire-investor-tom-steyer-says-clean-tech-will-win-climate-war-1922347, 7-10-24, EP]

In a wide-ranging interview, Steyer talked about the climate stakes in the coming election and why he wrote a book about how clean energy is on the cusp of tremendous growth. This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Finally we look at the effects of non-instrumented raw climate patent counts as measure of increased climate innovation. This enables us to explore the real impact of the underlying climate- related technologies, independently of the granting of patent protection for these technologies. We find significant improvements in operating performance, in line with similar effects documented in the literature for non-climate patents (Kogan, Papanikolaou, Seru, and Stoffman, 2017), and also significant reductions in direct (Scope 1) emission intensity starting in year 3 after the climate patent application. Thus, in line with our interpretation of the signal value of climate patents, we find that improvements in climate innovators’ operating performance and carbon efficiency are linked to the underlying technology and not to the innovator being granted patent protection.

Despite gloomy predictions, the global economy remains remarkably resilient, with steady growth and inflation slowing almost as quickly as it rose. The journey has been eventful, starting with supply-chain disruptions in the aftermath of the pandemic, an energy and food crisis triggered by Russia’s war on Ukraine, a considerable surge in inflation, followed by a globally synchronized monetary policy tightening.

Global growth bottomed out at the end of 2022, at 2.3 percent, shortly after median headline inflation peaked at 9.4 percent. According to our latest World Economic Outlook projections, growth this year and next will hold steady at 3.2 percent, with median headline inflation declining from 2.8 percent at the end of 2024 to 2.4 percent at the end of 2025. Most indicators continue to point to a soft landing.

[Patricia and Jack, 7-5-2024, The New York Times, “Political Unrest Worldwide Is Fueled by High Prices and Huge Debts,” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/05/business/global-economy-debt-inequality.html, accessed 7-11-2024, CM]

Economic problems always have political consequences. Yet economists and analysts say that a chain of events set off by the Covid-19 pandemic created an acute economic crisis in many parts of the planet, laying the groundwork for the civil unrest that is blooming now.

[Heather, 7-9-2024, The Washington Post, “Opinion America’s best recession indicator is flashing yellow,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/09/economy-recession-risk-sahm-rule/, accessed 7-10-2024, CM]

The Sahm Rule indicator is getting close to 0.50, which signals a recession. The rule compares the latest three-month average of the unemployment rate to the lowest three-month average from the past year.

The USPTO has an examiner problem, and everyone in the industry has known about it for a very long time. There are some examiners that do not follow the law, and they ignore Office procedures, rules, and protocols. There are some examiners that never issue any patents, year after year denying everything they review. Likely because of archaic government human resources rules, it is virtually impossible to fire malcontent and malicious examiners. The Office solution is to leave them in place and turn the application process into a crapshoot for innovators.

Luckily, as the result of examiner allowance data being readily available, it is easy enough today to identify when you have received an examiner with a single-digit allowance rate, which should simply cause sane innovators to abandon immediately. What is impossible to identify, however, is when an examiner will use their own biases and morality rather than the law to prevent a patent from ever issuing.

[Dana Dickson Law, 7-6-21, trademark lawyer, former USPTO worker, “Record-breaking backlog at the USPTO,” https://www.danadicksonlaw.com/post/record-breaking-backlog-at-the-uspto, 7-09-24, EP]

The USPTO is struggling to deal with an unprecedented volume of trademark applications. The result is unpredictable wait times for processing of applications and any documents related to them. Back when I reviewed trademark applications at the USPTO, the goal was always to review every application within three months or less after the filing date. Current wait times are more than twice as long. In early July, I am still waiting for the USPTO to review applications that I filed in late December of last year – that’s more than six full months. I feel bad for my clients and for the current examining attorneys at the Trademark Office - the job already places them under tremendous time pressure, even in the best of circumstances.

[Matthew D. Asbell, Fordham university adjunct professor of law, Ladas & Parry LLP associate, Eric Perrott, trademark and copyright attorney partner, and Hannah Rosenson, Epstein Drangel LLP partner, 7-6-22, “The USPTO Has Enacted the Trademark Modernization Act: But Now What?,” https://www.americanbar.org/groups/intellectual_property_law/publications/landslide/2021-22/june-july/the-uspto-has-enacted-trademark-modernization-act-now-what/, 7-11-24, EP]

Fraudulent Applications Are Slowing Down Examination and Hurting the Integrity of the Principal Register

[Dana Dickson Law, 7-6-21, trademark lawyer, former USPTO worker, “Record-breaking backlog at the USPTO,” , 7-09-24, EP]

There is extra cause for concern here, because a significant percentage of the applications filed on behalf of applicants based in China are fraudulent. Back in 2019, NYU Law professors Barton Beebe and Jeanne Fromer testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee that they estimated 66.9% of certain applications filed at the USPTO and originating in China “included fraudulent specimens” (specifically, their research looked at applications filed in 2017 for apparel goods in Class 25). (For the full-text of their testimony, click here.) If an applicant files to register a trademark based on use, they must submit evidence to the USPTO that they are actually using their mark out there in the U.S. marketplace in connection with the goods/services identified in the application. That is the purpose of a specimen. So submitting a fake specimen is a big deal: it represents an effort to bypass the requirement of actual use.

[Dana Dickson Law, 7-6-21, trademark lawyer, former USPTO worker, “Record-breaking backlog at the USPTO,” https://www.danadicksonlaw.com/post/record-breaking-backlog-at-the-uspto, 7-09-24, EP]

There are multiple reasons for this increase. The shocking December numbers can be explained, in part, by the fact that the USPTO had announced fee increases that would go into effect the following month. I saw that factor motivate a lot of people to file in December and avoid the higher fees. But one of the most important factors here is the surge in applications filed on behalf of China-based applicants. A few months ago, a USPTO IT specialist reported to the World Trademark Review that nearly 40% of the trademark applications filed with the USPTO in the fourth quarter of 2020 came from China-based applicants. In a Fortune article entitled “China is flooding the U.S. with trademark applications and no one is sure why,” the authors point out that as recently as 2010, China-based applicants filed only 1% of the trademark applications received by the USPTO. (For more details, click here.) So how did we go from 1% to nearly 40% in the span of a decade? The same article points out that some Chinese municipal governments pay locals to register trademarks in the U.S. – as much as $800 for applicants located in Shenzhen.

[Matthew D. Asbell, Fordham university adjunct professor of law, Ladas & Parry LLP associate, Eric Perrott, trademark and copyright attorney partner, and Hannah Rosenson, Epstein Drangel LLP partner, 7-6-22, “The USPTO Has Enacted the Trademark Modernization Act: But Now What?,” https://www.americanbar.org/groups/intellectual_property_law/publications/landslide/2021-22/june-july/the-uspto-has-enacted-trademark-modernization-act-now-what/, 7-11-24, EP]

To make matters worse, many of those trademarks should not have registered in the first place. The USPTO has also been experiencing an unprecedented surge in trademark applications from overseas, particularly from China. Many of these applications share a number of unusual features, including lists of goods within a class that are unlikely to be sold together in the marketplace and evidence of use (i.e., specimens) that appear to be mock-ups or doctored images.

[Matthew D. Asbell, Fordham university adjunct professor of law, Ladas & Parry LLP associate, Eric Perrott, trademark and copyright attorney partner, and Hannah Rosenson, Epstein Drangel LLP partner, 7-6-22, “The USPTO Has Enacted the Trademark Modernization Act: But Now What?,” https://www.americanbar.org/groups/intellectual_property_law/publications/landslide/2021-22/june-july/the-uspto-has-enacted-trademark-modernization-act-now-what/, 7-11-24, EP]

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has been facing a crisis. There are close to three million registered trademarks, and new trademark applications are being filed at a record pace. In 2021 alone, the USPTO registered over 367,000 applications. As the register grows, unused (and unwanted) trademark registrations (“deadwood”) are a significant problem as they make it more difficult for new trademark applicants to protect their own marks.

[Carrie Bader, 4-4-22, Head of Erise’s trademark practice,“Trademark Delays: Strategies to Work Around the USPTO Backlog,” , 7-9-24]

Over the past few years, it has been taking longer and longer to get a trademark registration from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”).

[Ji-Hyun, Sun-Jae Lee, Agency for defense development information system and communication technology center researcher, Sung-Pil Park, Graduate school of future strategy Professor graduated from northwestern University Pritzker school of law with a Doctor of Juridical Science degree and is a member of the Michigan bar, Il-Gu Lee, Department of convergence security engineering professor with a Ph.D. In the graduate school of information security in computer science and engineering department, January 2023, Science Direct, “IP dLedger - Decentralized ledger for intellectual property administration”, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162522006266, Accessed July 08 2024, AMH]

With the rapid growth of , the applications of intellectual property (IP) rights and prior art documents are increasing rapidly. Patent examiners are usually overworked to evaluate inventions referring to a large volume of prior arts in a short period. Such increasing workloads and documents may cause administrative inefficiencies and generate low-quality IPs that hamper technological innovation. Moreover, today's centralized IP administration system is inefficient in processing speed, security, and cost. Inefficiencies of IP administration in each national IP office impede speedy and efficient cooperation for international application and registration. This study proposes an IP decentralized ledger (IP dLedger) based on the blockchain to significantly reduce IP administration costs and improve IP use. IP dLedger connects the on-chain (blockchain) to the off-chain (centralized database) systems using IP codes that combine hash values and timestamps. Similar to the web hypertext method, this connective feature of IP dLedger enables users who click on identification information registered in a blockchain network to access, through a hyperlink, a centralized database of enormous volumes of related IP information. Therefore, IP dLedger can reduce IP administration costs, increase IP usage, and facilitate safe and convenient use of the IP data.

[Emily N, Summer 2021, Missouri Law Review, “Balancing Purpose, Power, and Discretion Between Article III Courts and the Patent Office”, https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/mlr/vol86/iss3/13/, Accessed July 08 2024, AMH]

Roughly eight million patents have issued since 1963.150 The harsh reality of the U.S. patent system is that many of these were later found invalid and never should have been granted.151 This reality will assuredly continue to apply to patents that have yet to issue. Examiners are overworked, have little time allotted for patent examination, and are underpaid.152 These conditions allow invalid patents to slip through the cracks. Invalid patents hinder “the progress of science and useful arts” as outlined in the Constitution.153 Post-grant proceedings are useful tools to protect American interests from invalid patents.154 However, what is considered an “American interest” to protect is subject to interpretation.155