New 'Innovation Race' Podcast Focuses on China's Push to Overtake US by Exploiting Patent System Weaknesses
Tea Party Patriots Action launched its “Innovation Race Podcast” Tuesday, which explores the imminent threat of communist China exploiting the relatively recently created weaknesses in America’s patent system in order to become the world’s tech leader.
The podcast provides a platform to delve further into the issues covered in the documentary film “Innovation Race,” which will be released in theaters next month.
“Our documentary, ‘Innovation Race,’ just scratches the surface on many issues our nation is facing, stemming from our weakened patent system. To offer more depth into the topics, and to feature friends that were not able to participate in the filming, we created the Innovation Race Podcast to continue the conversation,” said host Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder and honorary chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action.
The documentary “Innovation Race” details how the United States actually opened the door for China, the world’s second-largest economy, to make its move toward global dominance thanks to the passage of the “America Invents Act” in 2011 during the Obama administration.
The legislation had broad bi-partisan support, but its impact, perhaps unintentionally, was to weaken the nation’s patent system, which has been the gold standard for the world.
Multiple experts in “Innovation Race” contended that China has assimilated the best of how the U.S. patent system used to work.
Declan Ganley, an inventor and CEO of Rivada Networks, believes Beijing reasoned, “What if we don’t just steal the technology? What if we steal the system that America actually operated successfully and we implement it in China. What if we out America, America?”
The debut episode of the “Innovation Race Podcast” features Molly Metz, a five-time jump rope world champion who created and patented a jump rope to help her succeed in her craft.
“Known as the Queen of the Rope, Molly followed all of the protocols to have her ideas and invention patented, only to have her patents ‘invalidated’ by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)” Tea Party Patriots Action explained in a Wednesday news release.
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One of the biggest changes that was made to the patent system by the America Invents Act was establishing an administrative tribunal as part of U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the PTAB, to review patent challenges, which is outside of the federal court system.
Randy Landreneau, president of the company U.S. Inventor, said the PTAB lacks the due process a real court has and other factors that results in many more patents being invalidated.
“Eighty-four percent of the patents that go through the PTAB get fully or partially invalidated,” he noted, in the “Innovation Race” documentary.
Gary Lauder — a venture capitalist and managing director of Lauder Partners LLC — pointed out in the film that it costs about a half a million dollars per case to defend the challenges to one’s patent at the PTAB.
Metz told Martin in the “Innovation Race Podcast” debut, “I’m a jump roper. I never dreamed that I would be spending my time and money fighting to keep my patents, instead of coaching kids and teams in the sport.”
She added, “I hope it helps others understand these issues and inspires change in the legislation that protects small businesses like mine.”
Another guest that will be featured in the “Innovation Race Podcast” is Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who is himself an inventor.
Massie introduced the “Restoring America’s Leadership in Innovation Act of 2021” to reverse some of the harmful changes to patent law brought about by the America Invents Act and some Supreme Court rulings.
Some of the other upcoming guests on the podcast include Ganley, Lauder, U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. (ret.) Robert Spalding III (author of “Stealth War: How China Took Over While America’s Elites Slept”), retired federal judge Paul Michel (who served as chief judge of America’s patent court) and China expert Gordon Chang (author of “The Great U.S.-China Tech War”).
Chang observed in the “Innovation Race” documentary, “Dominating technology means you dominate the economy of the world. Dominate the economy of the world, you dominate the world itself.”
The “Innovation Race Podcast” can be found on YouTube as well as Apple, Google, Spotify and iHeartRadio.
Learn more about the “Innovation Race” documentary, due in theaters next month, here.
