An Interview with David Jones

• Author: Eli Mazour
• Position: Eli Mazour is the host of the Clause8 Podcast (clause8.co) and is counsel at Harrity & Harrity LLP. He leads the firm's patent prosecution team and specializes in helping technology companies build valuable, high-quality patent portfolios in an efficient manner. He can be reached at emazour@harrityllp.com.
• Pages: 7-11

Published in Landslide® magazine, Volume 12, Number 1, a publication of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law (ABA-IPL), ©2019 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

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PROFILES IN IP LAW

An Interview with David Jones

Executive Director of the High Tech

Inventors Alliance (HTIA)

By Eli Mazour

Eli Mazour is the host of the Clause8 Podcast (clause8.co) and is counsel at Harrity & Harrity LLP. He leads the rm’s patent prosecution

team and specializes in helping technology companies build valuable, high-quality patent portfolios in an efcient manner. He can be reached

at emazour@harrityllp.com.

Before the 2016 election, all three branches of government were largely driven by the “patent troll” narrative when it came to pat-

ent issues. This was largely due to the successful efforts of “big tech” and their non-tech allies that thought they were being unfairly

targeted by patent owners. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Alice, which restricted patent eligibility, and the passage of the

America Invents Act (AIA), which created new post-grant proceedings for challenging patents, were in many ways the last, major

rewards of those efforts.

After the 2016 election, GOP Congressman Darrell Issa—who was then the chairman of the subcommittee handling intellec-

tual property (IP) issues—publicly urged President Donald Trump to keep Obama’s head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Ofce

(USPTO). Instead, Trump nominated Director Andrei Iancu. Since his conrmation, Iancu has publicly bemoaned the “patent troll”

narrative and has taken steps to soften some of the impact of Alice and the AIA. In Congress, Issa—along with House Judiciary

Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Senator Orrin Hatch—continued to push new “patent reform” efforts to deal with the patent troll prob-

lem. However, the efforts went nowhere and all three announced that they would not run for reelection during the midterms.

After the midterm elections, the Senate’s biggest proponents of strengthening patent rights—Senators Thom Tillis and Chris

Coons—were named as the leaders of the reconstituted Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property. A longtime

proponent of strengthening patent rights—Representative Doug Collins—replaced Goodlatte as the top Republican on the

House Judiciary Committee. Instead of patent reform legislation, Tillis, Coons, and Collins are considering legislation to undo

the impact of Alice by clarifying § 101 of the Patent Act. During hearings related to the legislation, Tillis noted that “big tech”

companies were invited to testify but chose not to do so individually. Instead, David Jones of HTIA and representatives of two

other tech trade associations represented the views of the tech industry.

After working for Senator Hatch on Capitol Hill and as assistant general counsel for IP policy at Microsoft, Dave became the head

of HTIA earlier this year. HTIA represents nine of the largest technology companies in America. Most of those companies were pre-

viously members of the Coalition for Patent Fairness, which successfully lobbied in support of the AIA. During the interview, Dave

explained that although the companies are very different in some ways, “there are a lot of connections between these companies, at a

personal level. The chief patent counsels all know each other, get along well, and share very similar views on the patent system.”

I sat down with Dave to discuss HTIA, whether there was a shift in Washington with regard to patent issues, and the attitudes of “big

tech” companies toward these developments. Dave was in good spirits, happy to talk about any subject, and generous with his time—in

other words, not what one would expect from a representative of a group that is supposedly in retreat on patent issues.

What are some of the disagreements that HTIA member

companies have on patent issues?

There’s nothing major. I mean, there are no big ghts. I guess

the biggest set of disagreements are actually not disagreements

about substance, they’re disagreements about priorities. For some

of my members, I think their number one priority is preserv-

ing effective post-grant proceedings, and probably their number

two priority is § 101. Whereas for some members probably, their

top priority is § 101. And everyone cares about improving patent

quality, but the companies prioritize this a bit differently. So, the

member companies generally have very similar views, and any

disagreements are pretty minor and usually not about the posi-

tion to take, but more a question of where we should put time and

resources in order to satisfy everyone’s priorities.

What do your member companies think is the

role of patents in America?

We believe the role of the patent system—which is consti-

tutionally dened—is to promote the progress of the useful

arts, which I think is almost universally agreed translates into

advancing technology. So, the purpose of the patent system

is to encourage technological progress, which is why we’re