What Korean battery companies' fight for trade secrets means for auto industry

Right now, two subsidiaries of Korean global conglomerates are engaged in a bitter intellectual property (IP) theft dispute before the United States International Trade Commission (ITC). LG Chem has accused SK Innovation of stealing trade secrets pertaining to its lithium-ion battery technology and then leveraging these trade secrets to secure lucrative contracts in the United States,... read more.

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Ainsley Shea
Mosaic Company Stock Prices Increase After the Company Files Petitions Requesting Countervailing Duties on Phosphates - Impeded Fertilizer Imports Due to Tariffs Will Result in Higher Domestic Prices

From Georgetown Capital Advisors: On June 26, The Mosaic Company (NYSE: MOS) announced that it had filed petitions with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) and the US Department of Commerce (DoC) requesting the imposition of countervailing duties (CVDs) on imports of phosphate from Morocco and Russia. Mosaic’s stock has, since that date, appreciated 80.5% as of the market close on Friday, December 11, with price increases following key events related to the investigation.

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Ainsley Shea
Intellectual Property Comments to the USPTO

US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Andrei Iancu put out a request for comments for feedback on what stakeholders think the rules should be for the Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB). This represented a pivotal opportunity to commend the USPTO for this inquiry and urge serious regulations/guardrails/reforms to PTAB--an opportunity we gladly seized. Read the comments we submitted here.

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Ainsley Shea
American Innovation Thrives with Reliability, Certainty, and Rule of Law

The Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity, along with 22 other free market groups, recently signed onto a letter to U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and U.S. Representative Jim Jordan, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, expressing our strong support for the important changes that the current leadership of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) has made over the past three years to bolster patent reliability and to promote the rule of law.

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Ainsley Shea
Canadian Medicine Cabinets Are Not the Place to Find Lower-Priced or Safer Drugs for Americans

On September 24, the Trump Administration finalized its plan to allow for the importation of prescription drugs from foreign markets. Under the plan, states could develop proposals for federal government approval to facilitate the importation of certain drugs from Canada. The Trump Administration plan is politically motivated and provides a false hope to voters that the plan would lead to lower drug costs and that the drugs would be safe.

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Ainsley Shea
“Most-Favored Nations” Executive Order Is a Betrayal

In his State of the Union Address, President Trump said, “We will never let socialism destroy American healthcare.”

Yet on Sunday, September 13, the president signed and released a “Most Favored Nations” Executive Order regarding prescription drugs covered under Medicare that imports socialism into American healthcare.

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Ainsley Shea
Racheter: Trade commission action could make life harder for already strained Iowa farmers

The International Trade Commission and Department of Commerce are entertaining a request to impose a new tax of between 30 to 71% on imported Moroccan and Russian phosphate fertilizer. It’s unclear why these bureaucrats would even consider this move when producers in all countries — including the U.S. — receive government subsidies. However, what is clear is that the added fees would have significant ramifications for the entire farm community.

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Ainsley Shea
Impact on Corn Growers from Imposing CVDs on Phosphate Fertilizer

Countervailing duties (CVDs) on phosphate fertilizer from Morocco and Russia would add between $100 and $250 per ton to the fob price of imported phosphate fertilizers. Based on the share of the fertilizer supply from imports, pro-rated by country market share, and the total domestic and imported supply, using the two-year average 2018-2019 fob Gulf price of MAP and DAP, the entire supply of phosphate fertilizers could see a $60 to $80 ton price increase.

This price impact could lead to an upstream $80 to $100 per ton increase in MAP and DAP fertilizer for farmers. For an N-P-K application rate of 180-70-70, that could mean a more than $7.60 per acre increase in production costs for phosphate fertilizers for U.S. farmers.

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Ainsley Shea
The Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity and The American Edge Project

The American Edge Project is a newly formed coalition dedicated to the proposition that American innovators are an essential part of U.S. economic health, national security and individual freedoms.

The Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity (TAPP) has long advocated for innovation in the American economy, especially by protecting intellectual property rights. TAPP has joined the American Edge Project in a coalition to maintain “America’s edge” through smart regulatory and policy strategies to preserve an open and accessible digital environment.

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Ainsley Shea
Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity Denounces Attorneys General Request for the Feds to Assert “March-In” Authority to Circumvent COVID-19 Potential Drug Patent Rights

Several states’ attorneys general have made an egregious request to the federal government to subvert the patent rights of Gilead Sciences, Inc., the manufacturer of Remdesivir, which has been fast-tracked by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and has shown promising results in reducing the risk of death and length of hospitalization for COVID-19 patients…

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Ainsley Shea
Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity Applauds U.S. Senators’ Letter Requesting Phosphate Tariff Petition Be Denied

At the request of the giant Mosaic Company, the U.S. Department of Commerce is poised to decide whether to pursue an investigation into imports of phosphates, which are commonly used in fertilizers in American agriculture, from Morocco and Russia, and could ultimately decide to slap exorbitant tariffs on those countries’ phosphate exports to the United States…

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Ainsley Shea
Phosphate Tariff Would Be Yet Another Blow to America’s Farmers

Farmers face an uphill battle every year, it seems—from bad weather, to weed infestations, to insect invasions. On top of this, farmers have recently had to contend with trade wars and, now, COVID-19. This year was supposed to be a moderately good year for farmers, but then COVID-19 hit, and now the agriculture industry is expecting to experience a downturn of over 20%, according to the Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri

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Ainsley Shea