TAPP Signs Coalition Letter Opposing U.K. Proposal on Standard-Essential Patents (SEPs)

The Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity has joined a coalition of over two dozen conservative organizations in signing a letter to President Trump, opposing a regulatory change proposed by the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO). If adopted, the UK IPO’s provisions would significantly threaten U.S. leadership in critical technologies—including artificial intelligence and 6G wireless—in which standardization is central.

U.S. innovators that participate in the standards-development process stand to suffer irreparable harm under the UK’s proposals. Meanwhile, Chinese and other foreign firms would be incentivized to inflate the number of patents—pursuing quantity over quality of patents.

In part, the coalition letter to the White House said, “We strongly urge you to intervene with the UK on behalf of the United States and U.S. innovators engaged in setting standards and whose patents are standard-essential (SEPs) for these important technologies. The UK IPO’s proposal will certainly impose a tremendous burden on America’s most inventive companies whose standard-essential patents set the cutting edge of critical and emerging technologies. SEPs secure exclusive rights—the essence of property rights—and enable U.S. competitiveness and global technological advancement. Standards-leading U.S. innovators go head to head against China’s and other nations’ national champions, whose governments heavily subsidize and protect them from the dynamism of the free market… [Britain’s] regulatory provisions… would be detrimental to American firms that invent such high-quality, technology-leading innovations that become the state of the art… The UK’s regulatory move effectively represents an assault on U.S. (as well as European) patent value, which is to say an attack on the quality of American and Western patented inventions in standardized areas of technology, on U.S. leadership in global research and development (R&D), and on patent licensing fees that are based on patent quality and market-set value.”

Read the full letter here.