Intellectual Property
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House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI), House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), and Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) today provided an update on the progress made by the bipartisan encryption working group:
Today, Congressman Ted Poe (R-TX) and Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) along with Congressman Blake Fahrenthold (R-TX) and Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) introduced H.R. 5321 the Stop Mass Hacking Act. This is the companion bill to legislation introduced on the Senate side by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY).
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) joined U.S. Representatives Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Darrell Issa (R-CA) as well as legendary Four Tops founding member, Duke Fakir, T Bone Burnett, Roseanne Cash, and more than three dozen artists and musicians at a press conference in support of H.R. 1733, the Fair Play Fair Pay Act. The legislation would harmonize and modernize the outdated rules that currently govern music licensing for digital and terrestrial radio broadcasts.
Today's hearing gives us an opportunity to study how the International Trade Commission handles patent disputes and whether it sufficiently protects American innovation.
In particular, we should focus on whether the Commission produces fair results to litigants and, most importantly, whether these results are beneficial to the American consumer.
Congress established the Commission as an independent, quasi-judicial federal agency to provide non-partisan counsel to the legislative and executive branches of the government.
In 2014, in a unanimous ruling delivered by Chief Justice Roberts, the Supreme Court concluded that the police may not search a cellphone without first demonstrating probable cause.
Citing an obvious Fourth Amendment interest in the vast amount of data we store on-and access from-our personal devices, the Court wrote:
I want to begin by thanking you, Chairman Goodlatte, and your staff, for working with us to develop the amendment before us now.
I also want to thank the members of the Digital Due Process Coalition, many of whom are represented here today, for their tireless dedication to the work of modernizing federal statute for the Internet age.
Over the last few weeks, Mr. Chairman, as we have worked out our few remaining differences on this bill, we have crafted what I believe to be an effective compromise.
The House Judiciary Committee today approved by a vote of 28-0 the Email Privacy Act (H.R. 699) to protect Americans' privacy and public safety in the digital age.