US bill seeks to block Huawei from seeking patent relief
Marco Rubio, US senator for Florida, is seeking to amend proposed US Senate legislation in order to prevent certain foreign companies from seeking relief with respect to US patents, prompting a fierce pushback from Chinese media.
Rubio’s amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), filed on Monday, June 17 and seen by Reuters, would prevent foreign companies listed on “certain US government watch lists”, from initiating litigation with respect to US patents.
Rubio confirmed the reports on his website yesterday.
The move comes after reports that Chinese telecommunications company Huawei was seeking licensing fees worth $1 billion for 230 of its patents from Verizon.
In a tweet published yesterday, June 18, Rubio said that Huawei was “using the tactics of patent trolls to attack US companies in retaliation for [the Trump administration’s] national security actions against them”.
“We should not allow China government backed companies to improperly use our legal system against us,” Rubio added.
In response, Chinese state media outlet The People’s Daily ran a piece accusing Rubio of applying a “double standard” to Huawei and Chinese firms with respect to IP protection.
According to the piece, Rubio’s amendment to the NDAA is designed to allow US firms to “blatantly grab the IP and patents of Chinese companies”.
The NDAA is an annual bill which sets spending limits for the US Department of Defense.
The Senate Armed Services Committee, which has responsibility for drawing up the legislation, published a draft of the NDAA for the forthcoming year last month.
According to its executive summary of the bill, the SASC proposals would require the Secretary of Defense to develop a list of academic institutions in China and Russia which are associated with those countries’ militaries.
The SASC said that this measure was proposed in order to “identify any university heavily engaged in military research as part of an effort to protect American national security academic researchers from undue influence and other security threats”.
That move comes after a string of US Department of Justice indictments over the past year which targeted Chinese researchers and state operatives for the alleged theft of trade secrets from US companies.
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