This week, we have a special guest. Walt Copan joins us for a conversation about the role of science, technology and innovation in U.S. competitiveness and for U.S. national security. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts (links here) or visit IPWatchdog Unleashed on Buzzsprout. We have also posted a complete transcript, and you can also watch the video on YouTube.

As many of you no doubt know, Walt is a former Undersecretary of Commerce and served as the 16thDirector of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a position for which he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate during the Trump Administration. Today, Walt is the Vice President for Research and Technology Transfer at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado.

I invited Walt to join us for our annual life sciences program this year. My pitch was that we would have a one-on-one conversation that would not only make up the final segment of the program, but which would also be used for our IPWatchdog Unleashed podcast. He graciously accepted my invitation, and we sat down for this conversation on Wednesday, October 30.

During our conversation we discuss the ongoing Bayh-Dole march-in rights drama [See here, here, here and here] being caused by his old agency -- NIST -- which has published a framework that would allow the government to strip patent rights away from exclusive licensees if the government believes the product covered by a patent is too expensive. We also discuss the diverging approach to commercialization between universities who can own and license patent rights and federal agencies, which operate under an entirely different statutory structure that makes it virtually impossible to get innovations made by federal government employees to the marketplace and commercialized for the good of society. Finally, we touch on the upward trajectory of China vis-à-vis innovation and intellectual property, and the stagnation within the U.S. innovation ecosystem, which has been primarily led by uncertainty and dismantling of the U.S. intellectual property laws.

And despite all of the challenges, Copan explains that he is optimistic, even as he says that he firmly believes a crisis is coming, and change is necessary for American competitiveness and U.S. national security.

"I think that the dynamic that we currently see in national security and competitiveness, I mentioned the ascendancy of China, China's intellectual property system, and China's investment in technology that are supported by standard essential patents as well, that there is a growing awareness that the United States needs to be in a position to compete as effectively as we can and to remove legislative and policy barriers," Copan said as he discussed the various hurdles and headwinds facing the United States. "We are damaging the United States and our ability to continue to be a global economic superpower through these legislative impediments and through these policy restrictions."

"And sometimes America will only respond in a crisis," Copan explained. "A crisis focuses the mind. And we've seen many crises already... And the majority of critical materials innovation and production currently is flowing through China. And we have seen China halt the export of certain key materials that are important for the electronics industry, that are important for the energy sector, and important to the defense sector. Those are shots across the bow... I do firmly believe that a crisis is coming."

"I think there are parties that are unwittingly attempting to [throw the baby out with the bathwater] by misapplying legislation, by really twisting policy. The foundations are strong. The foundations go back to the beginning of the nation and our Constitution and the importance of clear intellectual property rights, the enablement of entrepreneurship by the little guy, rather than the support of the crown for the organizations that were favored to receive these protections," Copan said. "It's not the time to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's really time to double down on those things that have worked well for America and to continue to improve them while maintaining their integrity."