Archive

Archive for January, 2016
January 29th, 2016 at 11:03 am
Video: More Inventors, Fewer Lawyers
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In this installment of the Freedom Minute, the Center for Individual Freedom’s (“CFIF”) Renee Giachino discusses our nation’s growing epidemic of frivolous patent litigation by illegitimate parties who hope to score “jackpot jury” verdicts or simply frighten legitimate patent holders into costly out-of-court settlements to avoid catastrophic litigation costs, and the bipartisan effort in Washington,  DC, to help address the problem.

January 29th, 2016 at 8:34 am
More Executive Overreach: The EPA and “Cap and Trade”
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In an interview with the Center for Individual Freedom, William Yeatman, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, discusses the EPA’s Clean Power Plan overreach and why the Model FIP is a cap-and-trade policy and thereby raises concerns under the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Listen to the interview here.

January 28th, 2016 at 11:01 am
Ramirez Cartoon: The Revenant
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Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

January 25th, 2016 at 3:39 pm
Yes to Spectrum Auction, No to Double-Dipping
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CFIF has long advocated auction of over-the-air television stations’ airwaves – or spectrum – by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which offers a critical free-market opportunity for the wireless telecommunications industry to avoid looming network congestion issues.  It’s one of those rare potential win/win opportunities as Americans increasingly rely on mobile devices, and it constitutes the core mission of what the FCC should rightfully be doing with its resources.

While strongly favoring spectrum auction, however, we’ve also consistently opposed crony capitalist efforts to game the system and corrupt this promising opportunity.  Just last week, for example, we highlighted our distaste for Dish Network’s scheme to exploit “small business” discounts for its own benefit.

Unfortunately, we may be witnessing another attempt at exploitation of the spectrum auction process.  Namely, television broadcasters offering spectrum in the upcoming incentive auction may possess the ability to sell it twice, as reported by Broadcasting & Cable’s Washington Bureau Chief John Eggerton:

According to a source familiar with their thinking, some ‘major’ broadcasters are looking at putting spectrum in the pot and, if they win, taking advantage of tax laws to keep that money in escrow and use more cash, or a loan, to bid on some of that reclaimed broadcast spectrum in the forward auction – they would need to use other money since reverse payments won’t be available until both sides of the auction close.  They could then sell or lease the spectrum to wireless carriers hungry for it.”

What would make such attempts particularly galling is that the broadcasters originally received that spectrum free of charge, so they’d be selling twice something they didn’t pay for even once.

FCC auction of spectrum for more productive use is to be applauded, and was a long time in coming.  But please, let’s keep it free of attempts at unjust enrichment via exploitation of byzantine regulatory mechanisms.

January 25th, 2016 at 2:57 pm
Frank v. Poertner and the Future of Class Action Litigation
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In an interview with CFIF, Ted Frank, Senior Attorney and Director of the Center for Class Action Fairness at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, discusses unfair class action procedures and settlements and the petition for certiorari before the US Supreme Court in Frank v. Poertner.

Listen to the interview here.


January 25th, 2016 at 2:15 pm
This Week’s “Your Turn” Radio Lineup
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Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CST to 6:00 p.m. CST (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.”  Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 CST/5:00 pm EST: Derek Scissors:  Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute – The Real Reason Behind the Dramatic Fall in China’s Stock Prices;

4:20 CST/5:20 pm EST: William Yeatman:  Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Senior Fellow in Environmental Policy and Energy Markets – EPA’s Clean Power Plan;

4:30 CST/5:30 pm EST:  David Barnes, Policy Director of Generation Opportunity – Millennials and the American Dream;

5:00 CST/6:00 pm EST:  Sarah Westwood, Watchdog Reporter for the Washington Examiner – Recent Stories from the Campaign Trail; and

5:30 CST/6:30 pm EST:  Timothy Lee, CFIF’s Senior Vice President for Legal and Public Affairs – IP Rights and Patent Litigation Reform and Internet Access Taxes.

Listen live on the Internet here.   Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330

January 21st, 2016 at 11:36 am
Coalition of 45 Organizations Urges Support for Making the Ban on Internet Access Taxes Permanent
In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, the Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”) today joined a coalition of more than 40 other organizations representing tens of millions of consumers from across the nation to urge support of a permanent extension of the Internet Tax Freedom Act currently embedded in H.R. 644, the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act.
“In the 17 years since Congress first passed a ban on Internet access taxes, the Internet has evolved from a luxury into a necessity of modern life. ITFA helped to spark this revolution,” the letter states.  “Without ITFA, it is likely that Internet services would be taxed at the high rates of tax imposed on traditional telecommunications services, which often are more than double the rate of tax imposed on other goods and services.”
The letter concludes by urging the U.S. Senate “to act swiftly and decisively to pass a permanent extension of ITFA.”
To read the letter in its entirety, click here (.pdf).
To read the coalition press release, click here.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, the Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”) today joined a coalition of more than 40 other organizations representing tens of millions of consumers from across the nation to urge support of a permanent extension of the Internet Tax Freedom Act currently embedded in H.R. 644, the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act.

“In the 17 years since Congress first passed a ban on Internet access taxes, the Internet has evolved from a luxury into a necessity of modern life. ITFA helped to spark this revolution,” the letter states.  “Without ITFA, it is likely that Internet services would be taxed at the high rates of tax imposed on traditional telecommunications services, which often are more than double the rate of tax imposed on other goods and services.”

The letter concludes by urging the U.S. Senate “to act swiftly and decisively to pass a permanent extension of ITFA.”

To read the letter in its entirety, click here (.pdf).

To read the coalition press release, click here.

January 20th, 2016 at 4:18 pm
Ramirez Cartoon: Hitting the Jackpot
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Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

January 15th, 2016 at 4:54 pm
IP Rights and Patent Litigation Reform Are Complementary, Not Contradictory
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In a recent Daily Caller piece entitled “Patents Are Private Property, Too,” Eagle Forum adviser James Edwards throughout most of his column marshals a strong defense of America’s intellectual property (IP) rights system.

Unfortunately, in his final two paragraphs he needlessly and erroneously detours into alleging that patent litigation reform efforts before Congress somehow undermine IP protections.  The truth is precisely the opposite.  Patent litigation reform and IP rights are complementary, not contradictory.

CFIF takes a backseat to no organization in defending IP rights, and Edwards rightly highlights how America’s strong IP system provides the foundation upon which we became and remain the most innovative and prosperous nation in human history.  He correctly notes that our Founding Fathers considered IP a natural right no different than physical property, and how they accordingly specifically protected them in the text of the Constitution.  As Abraham Lincoln later observed, “The patent system added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius.”

And as we have noted repeatedly, it is not by coincidence that America maintains the world’s strongest IP protections while also standing unrivaled as the most inventive, powerful, prosperous and influential nation in history.  That relationship is causal.

Unfortunately, in his final two paragraphs Edwards veers regrettably astray.  Specifically, he claims that patent litigation reform legislation currently under Congressional consideration would somehow undermine patent rights and “make it much more difficult and riskier to defend one’s patent against infringers.”

Respectfully, that is flatly false.

Patent litigation reform legislation, which passed the House two years ago with an overwhelming 325-to-91 majority, addresses how patent disputes are litigated, not patent rights themselves.

Under current law,  as most people know, overly litigious actors can file frivolous lawsuits or baselessly defend against valid claims because it’s highly unlikely under our current system that they’ll be forced to pay the other side’s attorney fees and litigation costs when they ultimately lose.  That’s because American law generally requires each side to pay its own costs and fees, even if the other side’s claim was weak.  As a litigating attorney who defended against innumerable frivolous claims in my legal career, I can confirm firsthand that winning an award of costs and fees from even the most egregious litigants is exceedingly and unfortunately rare.  Accordingly, bad actors often use our court system to extract improper settlements or frighten legitimate patent holders from defending their rights due to the prospective time and costs of litigation.

That’s where patent litigation reform comes in.

The Innovation Act, the bill that CFIF most strongly supports, targets abuse of our court system by:  (1) Holding losing parties accountable for prevailing parties’ attorney fees and costs unless they can demonstrate that their “position and conduct … were reasonably justified in law and fact, or that special circumstances (such as severe economic hardship to a named inventor) make an award unjust”;  (2) Reforming pleading standards to require greater clarity and justification for their case, rather than relying on vague and unintelligible boilerplate allegations;  (3)  Increasing transparency regarding the true owners of disputed patents;  and (4) Streamlining the burdensome discovery process, which too often imposes oppressive burdens and delays resolution of cases.

Those are manifestly common-sense litigation reforms that all Americans, particularly conservatives and libertarians who broadly favor reform of America’s flawed system of litigation, should support.

CFIF simply would not support any bill that undermined America’s patent or other IP protections.  The simple fact is that patent litigation reform would protect legitimate patent holders, and the only people with anything to fear are those who cannot demonstrate that their claims are based upon good faith and valid law – which is not difficult for legitimate litigants to show.  We therefore encourage all of our supporters and activists across the country to contact their elected representatives in Congress to voice their support for badly-needed patent litigation reform legislation.

January 15th, 2016 at 9:19 am
Obama’s Executive Action on Gun Control
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In an interview with CFIF, Cam Edwards, host of NRA News’ Cam & Co., discusses President Obama’s proposed executive action on gun control, how the president’s stated belief in the Second Amendment is inconsistent with his executive action, and why the executive actions will do nothing to stop violent crime.

Listen to the interview here.

January 13th, 2016 at 12:01 am
Ramirez Cartoon: The State of the Union
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Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

January 11th, 2016 at 2:41 pm
This Week’s “Your Turn” Radio Show Lineup
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Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CDT to 6:00 p.m. CDT (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.”  Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 CDT/5:00 pm EDT:  Ted Frank, Senior Attorney, Director of the Center for Class Action Fairness, Competitive Enterprise Institute: Class Action Awards and Frank v. Poertner;

4:30 CDT/5:30 pm EDT:  Arturo Porzecanski, Distinguished Economist in Residence at American University: Puerto Rico debt crisis;

5:00 CDT/6:00 pm EDT:  Cam Edwards, host of Cam & Co on NRA News: President Obama’s Executive Action on Gun Control;

5:15 CDT/6:15 pm EDT:  Carrie Severino, Chief counsel and Policy Director of the Judicial Crisis Network: SCOTUS Oral Arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association; and

5:30 CDT/6:30 pm EDT:  Tzvi Kahn, Senior Policy Analyst for the Foreign Policy Initiative: Relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Listen live on the Internet here. Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.

January 7th, 2016 at 1:00 pm
Patent Litigation Reform: A Conservative No-Brainer for 2016
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As we enter 2016 and the presidential race accelerates, it can be tempting and even entertaining for conservatives and libertarians to find themselves divided on an array of issues, from foreign policy to immigration reform to how to improve our tax code.  Respectful debate and disagreement on such matters is both healthy and necessary.

On another issue, however, there should be little disagreement:  the desperate need for litigation reform in America.  That includes patent litigation reform, particularly in light of the fact that , as Wall Street Journal legal reporter Ashby Jones reports, 2015 just witnessed a 25% increase in patent suits in a single year:

Patent litigation brought by so-called ‘non-practicing entities’ continued to flourish in 2015, according to a new study, despite repeated attempts to curtail it.  According to the report, released Monday by RPX Corp., NPEs filed over 3,600 patent cases in 2015.  NPEs, also referred to derisively as ‘patent trolls,’ buy up patents and seek to make money from them through licensing and litigation.  NPEs filed 3,604 cases last year, a sharp increase over 2014, in which NPEs filed 2,891.

Fortunately, a large and bipartisan majority in Congress has recognized the need for patent litigation reform, which CFIF has strongly and consistently supported:

To address those widespread problems in our current patent litigation system, while also protecting legitimate patent claimants, Congressman Robert Goodlatte (R – Virginia) has reintroduced the Innovation Act.   Identical legislation passed the House approximately one year ago by a lopsided 325 to 91 vote, and nothing has changed since that date to justify a reversal.

The bill narrowly targets patent litigation abuses, primarily by introducing several key reforms to the patent litigation process.  Those reforms include:  (1) Greater ability to shift costs and fees to improper litigants than the current system provides;  (2) Heightened pleading standards that require greater clarity and justification for the lawsuit itself;  (3) Greater transparency regarding true owners of disputed patents;  and (4) Much-needed streamlining of the discovery process during litigation, which often imposes oppressive burdens in time and resources upon respondents.

Unfortunately, some opponents of reform have resorted to claiming that patent litigation reform would somehow undermine patent rights or intellectual property rights more broadly.  That is simply not the case, as we have explained exhaustively.  We at CFIF stand among the strongest proponents of IP protections, and we would not support any cause that undermined them.  The reality is that the bills we support target patent litigation abuse, not substantive patent rights themselves.  The Innovation Act, for instance, simply requires that losing parties in a patent lawsuit demonstrate “that the position and conduct of the nonprevailing party or parties were reasonably justified in law and fact or that special circumstances (such as severe economic hardship to a named inventor) make an award unjust.”

That is not a difficult hurdle to clear.

Accordingly, opponents of patent litigation reform must answer why requiring parties who resort to costly and protracted litigation to show that their claim is “reasonably justified in law and fact” is somehow unfair or excessively burdensome.   They cannot, and there is simply no reason for further delay in achieving patent litigation reform legislation in 2016.

January 6th, 2016 at 10:52 am
Ramirez Cartoon: Obama’s Executive Action on Guns
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Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

Shooting At the Constitution

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.