American Innovators Under Attack

Today, United States innovators are at a disadvantage when US companies, with strong ties to China, game our patent and court systems to engage in what can only be called intellectual property theft. American companies operate under a system designed by our Founders to protect innovation, but armies of patent attorneys working for large multinationals now exploit that same system to pilfer ideas from smaller, often more innovative, U.S. firms. While the Patent Office has taken steps to rein in abuse, the courts still allow deep-pocketed companies to drag out enforcement for years.

Recently, our company won a small but important victory in a long-running court case over the enforcement of our patents. A federal judge granted ParkerVision’s Rule 54(b) motion, allowing us to take our case against Qualcomm directly back to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit—our second visit to that court in three years. ParkerVision can now appeal a key ruling in its decade-plus effort to protect patents from a tech giant whose single largest source of revenue comes from China; a company, we believe, knowingly stole our technology more than a decade ago.

Under the American system, small innovators should get a fair shot in a tech world dominated by massive, foreign-backed conglomerates. It should not take more than a decade for U.S. innovators to receive justice.

ParkerVision began over forty years ago in Jacksonville, Florida, with a small group of engineers who believed in American innovation. Our first success was one of the world’s earliest digital thermostats—a technology so advanced that Carrier Corporation acquired it. Since then, we’ve built newsroom automation systems that won an Emmy and invested more than $300 million in wireless research. Today, our U.S.-based engineers are developing 5G and 6G technologies that can make civilian and military communications faster, stronger, and more secure. This is the kind of innovation America was built on—the kind the patent system is supposed to protect.