Will Trump Win the Presidential Election in November?

A common general inquiry I get from friends who are not Americans is “what is going on in the United States with respect to Trump—will he be reelected?”.  My answer is, “I don’t know.”  This may surprise some because they see Biden as the obvious winner.  Here are my imperfect and half-baked thoughts on the subject: 

1)      My guess is that we’ll get good news about a vaccine before the election.  It may even be distributed before the election to some in the United States.  My guess is that Trump’s biggest concern with mail in voting is that it’ll occur before the “best” news possible about a vaccine to COVID-19. 

2)     What about Trump’s handling of COVID-19?  This seems to look bad, but see above on point 1.  Also, Trump put the lock-down decisions in the hands of state and local government.  Could Trump have done more earlier?  Yes, I think he could of done more.  The Chinese apparently knew that masks were effective in slowing the spread.  Why didn’t we move faster on that?  But, see state and local government.  And, please don’t forget that many are suffering badly economically because of lock-downs. 

3)     What about Trump’s handling of race-related issues, including the George Floyd horror and BLM?  I think Trump’s botched this badly.  However, please remember that before the last election we had serious BLM protests.  I am concerned that Trump voters have become even more concerned about so-called “law and order issues.”  This means that turn-out amongst the concerned may be strong.  Hopefully, turn-out amongst BLM supporters will be strong.  Please remember one of President Obama’s relatively quick responses to the protests: Be sure to get out and vote in local elections. 

4)     What about the polls?  I haven’t looked closely at this, but my understanding is that the polls are not that far off from where Hilary Clinton was in the last election in battleground states—she had quite a nice lead.  I think Biden has a better lead now.  We’ll see if it holds up.  Also, please don’t forget one of the supposed reasons the last election defied the polls—people didn’t want to admit they were voting for Trump.  That effect may be even stronger now. 

5)     What about the debates?  I am quite worried about this.  I think Trump is going to blast Biden on any supposed mistakes concerning the Obama/Biden administration.  This time Biden is fully on the hook as VP: 1) Opioid Crisis; 2) Crappy Economy in Some Battleground States (goodness, AOC actually is attacking Opportunity Zones); 3) Bad Trade Deals; 4) Skyrocketing Health Care Costs; and 4) the China Relationship.  Finally, Trump doesn’t have to worry about how he looks debating a woman.  He is going to fully unload on Biden.  Biden also does not always present well in debates.  He sometimes looks befuddled.  If Trump is sharp, he may come out as the winner.  Biden needs to hammer Trump on his immigration disasters.  

6)      More stimulus is on the way.  More money directly into the pockets of Americans.  If the Senate Republicans were thinking, they’d continue the $600 unemployment benefit and push up the stimulus.  People are suffering economically.  When was the last time the economy was very good--when Trump was president.  Also, Trump just issued executive orders on pharmaceutical pricing and access--he's fulfilling campaign promises (see debates). 

7)      The most important issue concerning American politics is likely turnout.  If your people don’t turnout, then you’ve got a serious problem.  Will the lack of big-time rallies hurt Trump?  Maybe.  However, I fear the continuing protests in Portland and elsewhere are going to push some Trump protesters to vote.  What about young people?  Are they going to be pissed about Tik Tok?  Well, they need to register to vote.  Guess who won’t be on campus where a lot of voter registration efforts happen?  Young people.  What about Biden’s VP choice?  That may help with turnout for him, but may help the other side as well.  And, don’t forget, the possibility of a Supreme Court vacancy(ies) soon should be a good motivator to turnout.  That’s going to seriously be on the minds of members of both parties—it really should for Dems especially given the age and health of Dem Supreme Court Justices.  

What’s the answer?  I don’t know, but this election cycle is fascinating and the result is going to be devastating to one side.  What impact on IP and Innovation?  Whoever wins the impact will be huge--from USPTO appointments and policy to FTC/DOJ appointments and policy to court appointments to trade. 

Trump's New Drug Pricing Plan to be Released Soon -- Pay to Play?

How strange.  I was just thinking about why President Trump hasn't said much about drug pricing recently and then this . . . .  President Trump tweeted today that he and Secretary Azar will release a plan to lower drug prices by relying on the importation of drugs from other countries.  It will be interesting to see which states can import prescription drugs given the upcoming election--he seems to imply only some will be able to do so--expect a challenge to that.  His tweet stated: 

@SecAzar and I will soon release a plan to let Florida and other States import prescription drugs that are MUCH CHEAPER than what we have now! Hard-working Americans don’t deserve to pay such high prices for the drugs they need. We are fighting DAILY to make sure this HAPPENS...

Where is 5G communications technology IP coming from?

As I explained in IP Finance last week, following President Trump's blocking of Broadcom’s hostile bid to acquire Qualcomm, by remaining independent the cellular technology leader will be able to maintain its long-term commitment to high levels of R&D investment (at 23 percent of sales recently), most significantly including that in 5G communications standard-essential IP.

Use Cases for 5G International Mobile Telecommunications

5G is strategically important to the entire mobile ecosystem and to many nations for economic as well as for national security reasons.  The 5G standard will support many complementary technologies and market developments. Total estimated value is $12.3 trillion in 2035.

5G is a new standard that significantly embodies cumulative technology developments from previous cellular standards including 3G UMTS and 4G LTE. Many more innovative new technologies will also be added to 5G over the next decade or so. 

Transformation and growth with 5G

Mobile communications has improved in leaps and bounds since the introduction of analog phones in the early 1980s. After cellular was only significantly used for voice calling for a couple of decades, network traffic from voice was surpassed by data communications in 2009 with demand for the latter at least doubling every 18 months ever since. This is no mean feat. It resulted from major investments in technology R&D as well as in network facilities and new devices.

Exponential growth in mobile data

With the first commercial 5G deployments from around 2019, the new standard promises to be transformative and facilitate further growth with:

• Enhanced mobile broadband—even more of the above, with higher speeds and increased capacity to support that and additional users
• Ultra-reliable and low-latency communications for applications such as self-driving cars
• Massive Machine Type Communication in the Internet of Things (IoT) to connect tens of billions of sensors and other devices worldwide

While market opportunities are wide ranging and will include numerous technologies, they are most significantly underpinned by the mobile communications technologies developed and contributed to the 5G standard, including IP protected by standard-essential patents.

Building on the shoulders of giants

5G is substantially based upon previous cellular technologies. For example, whereas previous advances from 1G to 2G, from 2G to 3G and from 3G to 4G where largely defined by a totally new “air interface”, both 4G LTE and 5G “New Radio” are predominantly based on OFDMA wireless technology. 5G is also capitalizing on many other technologies that were already introduced in previous standards. Examples include QAM modulation, MIMO space division multiplexing and multi-carrier aggregation technologies. This short paper of mine explains in greater depth how seminal and foundational technologies are initially contributed to the standards and are then also very valuably reused in later standards. As standardization progresses, many more companies get involved in the process, including some who supplement these foundational technologies with additional contributions of varied worth.

As declarations begin to be made—of patents that owners believe are essential to the 5G standard—it will soon become apparent that a clear majority of these will have already have been declared essential to previous standards including various 3G standards and 4G LTE. Technology-IP leaders in 3G and 4G will therefore also tend be the leaders in 5G.

It is still very early for 5G SEP declarations because declarations are usually made several months after the setting of standards. The first standardization of 5G was not until December 2017 in 3GPP Release 15.[1]

Following this initial 5G standard release, there is substantial additional and ongoing development work including trials, debugging, development of commercial products and the introduction many new technical features and performance improvements.

Leading cellular technology innovators, among others, will continue to make new contributions to the standards in 5G, including additional technologies that are being introduced in later releases of the 5G standard, as also illustrated in this Qualcomm blog posting.

Quality trumps quantity in SEPs

The value of standard-essential technologies is largely a function of patent quality—particularly including seminal and foundational contributions—rather than of the raw numbers of patents filed, issued or declared essential to the standards. Nevertheless, significant attention is paid to these metrics, and on the numbers of technical contributions to standard setting organizations because these figures are easy to count and promote in the media, in licensing negotiations and in court litigation.

However, SEP declarations and the number of technical contributions companies make to the standard-setting process can easily be inflated by those who seek to “game the system.” Declarations of patents that owners believe might be essential or might become essential to the standards are not policed or verified by SSOs. Their IPR databases were set up to identify patents and their owners, not for the purposes of apportioning SEP value or FRAND royalty rates. As I have indicated previously in IP Finance, patent counting is inaccurate and unreliable even when third parties make essentiality checks.

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[1] 3GPP is the stand setting organization responsible for all the major mobile communications standards including 2G GSM, 3G UMTS, 4G LTE and 5G.

The PTAB Ruining the American Dream (?)

The BBC has a wonderful video of a “patent burning” outside the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  Who is burning patents?  American inventors who are protesting the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), once called the, “Patent Death Squad,” by former Chief Judge Randall Rader.  The inventors are upset that the PTAB is killing the American Dream and are making an appeal to President Trump to overturn the Obama Administration’s creation.  (Yes, it is the PTAB not skyrocketing home ownership costs that is ruining the American dream.  I guess that bubble will pass as well.) 

This is a nice angle to take since getting the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn itself is much more difficult.  I wonder how attempts to overturn Alice legislatively are doing in Congress.