00:00As we look at what we're going to do with emerging technologies, having this discussion is so important and having your input is so important.
00:11Mr. Cohen, I want to come to you because if you take the decade, 2011 to 2021, there was such a surge in patents that the Chinese were filing.
00:24And by 2019, they had produced more patents than we had for the first time in history.
00:32And that should be flashing red lights to us.
00:37We all know how they reverse engineer.
00:41They steal our intellectual property.
00:43It is a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars to our nation's economy.
00:49And tomorrow, Senator Coons and I are introducing a bill, the Countering Chinese Espionage Reporting Act.
00:58And this would require the Department of Justice to submit a report to Congress on exactly what is being done to combat this IP theft that continues to take place.
01:13Talk a little bit about looking at this holistically in addition to legislation.
01:20What are steps?
01:21If you could shape this response that our country has to China on this theft, what would you do?
01:32That's a great question.
01:34And it really is a kind of question that if I was back in the government, we would have a whiteboard exercise because there are multiple aspects that you would need to address it.
01:43To give you an example of two things you did not cover that are unfair acts.
01:47One is that the Chinese government has on its books a rule that requires Chinese students overseas or professionals overseas if they plan on filing a patent based on something created overseas to first report it to the Chinese embassy.
02:04How interesting is that?
02:06Another possibility that if you're Chinese, if you fill out the Chinese patent application form, there's a box you can check where you can say, I will file this patent anonymously.
02:19Why would you want to file a patent anonymously?
02:21There's actually been two criminal trade secret cases in the United States where an anonymous Chinese patent filing appeared in that case where the Chinese party or the party that was stealing a trade secret for the benefit of a Chinese entity requested that his name be disclosed from the Chinese patent office filing.
02:43So there are actually aspects here that need to be addressed head on that are built into the Chinese legislative system.
02:49There are a lot of reasons that China became a mega patent filing destination.
02:55Most of them are related to subsidies and some of them are related to the types of patents you can file in China.
03:02For example, my quick test on quality of Chinese patent filing is if you see that the majority of the patents are filed from September to December, it's probably because they want to use up subsidies before the end of the year.
03:15Well, let me bring you back to the USPTO because right now there is a backlog of 800,000 patents.
03:24And Senator Welch and I are working on legislation that would speed these patents on AI, quantum, these emerging technologies.
03:35And I would be interested in your take on that because this is something that deals with our national security.
03:43We have to speed up examination of patents.
03:47And we actually have a bit of a problem here because using the patent prosecution highway, a Chinese company, Chinese companies can secure a patent within as little as two to three months of their filing in China.
03:59Whereas a US entity filing in the United States, according to current pendency levels, will probably have to wait over two years, perhaps even more than three years.
04:08So we need to make sure that our system with China and the rest of the world is reciprocal and that patents that are critical to the United States for its economic development are treated fairly and are expedited.
04:22We're currently not doing that.
04:24Okay.
04:24Ms. Temple, I'm about out of time, but video piracy is something that so many of my creators in Nashville pay attention to because it adversely impacts them.
04:41And these are individuals that lose just so much money every year.
04:46Nationwide, this is billions of dollars in loss.
04:50And I know that you all have supported site blocking legislation.
04:57And since I'm out of time, if you will just submit to me in writing instead of walking me through, just submit what you think that should look like, how we use watermarks, how we approach this to solve this problem.
05:15Thank you, Senator.
05:16I appreciate your focus and definitely we can submit something for you.
