PERA won’t bolster competitiveness – it’s more likely to be used by foreign patent holders against US companies
Richard L. Blaylock, 2024 - partner with the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP and have been a practicing intellectual property attorney since the mid-1990s. Statement Before the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate Hearing on The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act – Restoring Clarity, Certainty, and Predictability to the U.S. Patent System, 1/24, https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2024-01-23_-_testimony_-_blaylock.pdf //DH
PERA will not improve America’s global competitiveness in the life sciences.
Patent law is a species of government regulation of the economy within the U.S. A patent is not a fundamental property right. Rather it is a limited right defined by and granted by the federal government. Notably, the innovation giving rise to a U.S. patent can occur anywhere in the world and therefore a more permissive U.S. patent policy would encourage and reward innovators outside the U.S. as much as within the U.S. By contrast, the constraint on economic activity resulting from a U.S. patent occurs almost entirely within the U.S. Broadening patent eligibility to produce more U.S. patents means greater constraints on domestic economic activity but the beneficiaries could just as easily be foreign patent-holders who reside in countries that are economic competitors and who could then have a meaningful impact on American healthcare economy through their patent position. If this subcommittee has an industrial policy goal of improving American competitiveness with respect to China or other countries in the field of genomics and medical diagnostics, there are many possible productive opportunities to explore, but PERA is not one of them.