Tech lobby to renew visa reform push
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(InfoWorld) - As Democrats take over leadership of both houses of the U.S. Congress from Republicans, technology industry lobbyists will try again to push for worker visa reform. Legislation to allow more highly skilled foreign workers to come to the U.S. and stay longer failed in the last session of Congress, but it will be reintroduced in the next session, said Andrea Hoffman, vice president of TechNet, a lobbying group for technology companies. TechNet is pushing for three reforms, Hoffman said: Increasing the number of H1B visas granted annually to foreign workers employed temporarily at U.S. companies; granting employment-based visas to workers whose H1B visas are about to expire but whose application for lawful permanent residency (commonly known as a "green card") is backlogged; and allowing foreign workers who earn advanced degrees at U.S. colleges and universities to stay and work in the U.S. once they graduate. Legislation on those reforms became part of a controversial immigration reform bill that tied Congress up in debates about illegal immigrants, deportation, and border security and ultimately failed. With Democrats winning control of the Congress in the November elections, TechNet is going to push its reform agenda anew, Hoffman said. "We are very optimistic," she said. "The change in leadership will be a very good opportunity for the tech industry." One way to keep highly skilled and well-paying jobs in the U.S. is to reform the student visa policy, said Gary Fazzino, vice president of governmental affairs for Hewlett-PackardÂ and a member of TechNet. "We're interested in making it easier for foreign-born students who come here and receive technical degrees to remain in the U.S. more easily than has been the case in the last few years," Fazzino said. HP hosted a public forum Monday on legislative issues in the new Congress featuring U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, a Silicon Valley Democrat. "I'll be very sensitive to the needs of the valley," Lantos told IDG News Service after the event, when asked about the proposed immigration reforms. He declined to discuss specifics. Under current law, 65,000 H1B visas are granted each year to foreign workers, each of whom needs to be sponsored by a U.S. company that couldn't find an American worker who has the needed skills. But that quota for federal fiscal year 2007 was filled before the year even began, according to Hoffman. TechNet wants the ceiling raised to 115,000. Labor interest oppose raising the ceiling. Among the critics is the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, in Seattle, which argues that there are more high-tech workers available in the U.S. than jobs to fill. TechNet also advocates a new "employment-based visa" category for those who have an H1B that is about to expire but are still on a waiting list for a green card. There is a backlog of more than 500,000 green card applications in the U.S., according to ImmigrationVoice.org. "The system is archaic," Hoffman said. "It is not consistent or structured in such a way that it fits business practices and models ... and we need change."
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If reform is the right word Today, some of the biggest names in high-tech have their eyes on the nation's capital, where lawmakers are babbling about an overhaul of the U.S. patent system.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - In the wake of a recent landmark Supreme Court ruling, patent reform is bubbling toward a boil on Capitol Hill, where advocates in both parties and both chambers are urging timely action on pending legislation and contending with well-financed interest groups on both sides of the issue. "This is a big fight about winners and losers," said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., adding that he is not entirely satisfied with the pending Patent Reform Act of 2007, which was introduced in the Senate in April. "The question is how do we strike the balance." The Patent Reform Act legislation would make the requirements for obtaining a new patent more stringent, make it easier for rivals to challenge patents, and reduce the penalties for patent violations. Committee chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont said that he, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and a number of other colleagues have been working on the nonpartisan bill for several years and that the existing patent system was designed for a bygone era. A decision by the Supreme Court in April in the case of KSR International vs. Teleflex marked a major clarification of the court's thinking about the granting of patents for new inventions and set a higher bar for what qualifies as an original invention. The ruling has already prompted legal wrangling between VoIP vendor Vonage in its ongoing dispute with Verizon over Internet telephony patents, and legal experts say that the ruling was a direct rebuke to lower courts that have tended to favor patent owners over those challenging the legality of patents that have been issued. Despite strong support from Democratic and Republican leaders in both chambers for change in the patent system, however, passage of the bill into law is not assured.Â  IT behemoths, including Cisco, Apple, Dell, HP, Microsoft, and Oracle, have aligned as the Coalition for Patent Fairness to press for the sweeping changes envisioned in the bill. They maintain that reforms are necessary to reduce costly, sometimes frivolous litigation. However, other technology companies, including InterDigital Communications and Qualcomm, have banded together as the Innovation Alliance and joined the biotechnology and manufacturing sectors to limit changes to the system. They argue that the bill would give patent infringers an advantage. The high stakes involved in the patent issue were illustrated June 6 at a hearing of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, which was briefly delayed as committee aides tried to locate an extra room for the overflowing crowd. "What we're trying to do here is move the process forward," Sen. Orrin Hatch said in an appeal to lobbyists for compromise once the hearing got started. "There are a number of organizations who could stop this bill." The bill's two main sticking points are a provision that would give the public a new opportunity to review patents after they've been granted, and a provision granting the right for an immediate appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit after a district court has made a pre-trial ruling on the framework that will be used to determine infringement (known as a "claim construction"). Large IT companies and the financial industry support the "post-grant review" of patents, which would allow for a reevaluation of suspect patent claims before companies are forced to go through lengthy, costly litigation, John Squires, chief intellectual property counsel at Goldman, Sachs & Co., told the committee. Opponents countered that the proposed post-grant review process would create an essentially limitless opportunity for rivals to challenge patents. "If a patent can be easily challenged at any time under a low standard of proof, (then) patents will have much less value, and investment predicated upon them will inevitably be diminished," Kathryn Biberstein, senior vice president of Alkermes, a biotechnology company, told the committee in her testimony. "This, in turn, will likely result in fewer cures for diseases and other breakthrough biotechnology products." The biotech industry and the Innovation Alliance also oppose the right for an immediate appeal after a claim construction ruling, arguing that it would encourage appeals, further prolonging cases. But advocates, including Palm senior vice president Mary Doyle, said it would reduce the chance of conducting unnecessary trials and cut down litigation costs. The witnesses were eager to raise two other controversial provisions in the legislation, regarding how damages in patent cases are determined and the expansion of the Patent and Trademark Office's authority to make rules. Doyle and Squires, supporting the bill's "mandatory apportionment" of damages provision, told the committee that damages today can be unreasonably high because the calculation is based on the value of an entire product, not just the patented feature at issue. Countering that argument, Biberstein and Bruce Bernstein, chief intellectual property and licensing officer at InterDigital, said that the provision would replace today's market-oriented valuation of inventions with subjective jury findings. Debate on expanding the PTO's rulemaking authority mirrored the rest of the patent debate with representatives from the financial sector and the Coalition for Patent Reform joining forces in support, while witnesses from the biotechnology sector and the Innovation Alliance cautioned against the change. An identical House version of the Patent Reform Act is pending, having recently won approval by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property. Leahy said he is eager to prepare the legislation for a vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee, but he did not indicate when that vote might occur.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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PEORIA, Ill. -- The 37-year-old computer science student was racing against a deadline. Just one day after picking up his visa from the U.S. Embassy in Qatar, he boarded a plane with his wife and five small children. The family flew to Chicago, caught a night's sleep at an airport hotel, then...
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Bill Gates and Steven A. Ballmer of Microsoft, along with other high-tech executives, are lobbying for more visas for temporary foreign workers and permanent immigrants.
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NEW YORK Visa is launching a pair of mobile initiatives in San Francisco that it hopes will help it learn more about what works in the still-emerging world of mobile marketing.
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(InfoWorld) - An advocacy group representing several tech vendor CEOs has been meeting with U.S. presidential candidates and getting a positive reception to the policies it's pushing, the group's executive director said. The Technology CEO Council, whose members include the chief executives of Intel, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Dell, has met with several presidential candidates in recent months, said Bruce Mehlman, executive director of the group. Mehlman declined to name the candidates the CEOs have met with, saying the group is better served at the moment by not naming names. "The meetings have been productive," Mehlman said. "There's been a lot of ... mutual recognition of the importance of innovation, the importance of remaining globally connected." The group wants to reach out early in an "intense political season," Mehlman said Thursday. The group is trying to present a "vision on how some of the big, broad, important trends should be thought about and talked about," he said. The U.S. presidential election is in November 2008. This week, the council released a report, called "A Great Nation," calling for U.S. lawmakers to focus on free trade and innovation. "A great nation does not fear overseas competition," the report says. "A great nation prepares its workers and companies to successfully compete in a global market." The report is an effort to get the council's views out about high-skilled immigration and free trade, Mehlman said. While the group has called for more H-1B skilled worker visas to be made available for U.S. companies to use, other groups, including some tech worker groups, have opposed raising the H-1B cap from the current 65,000, plus another 20,000 for students, each year. Commentators like CNN's Lou Dobbs have also opposed an immigration reform bill that would include a higher H-1B cap. "A lot of this is in the spirit of our recognition that a lot more Americans watch Lou Dobbs than read [classic free-market economist] Adam Smith," Mehlman said. "It takes real political courage to stand up for open markets these days." While Mehlman is upbeat about the group's meetings with candidates, he said he's still frustrated by the lack of action on the group's agenda. In April, the group releasedÂ its list of "seven for '07" legislative priorities, including immigration reform and a patent system overhaul, and the U.S. Congress has not passed any of the seven items. Even relatively uncontroversial measures like more funding for research at U.S. government agencies and a health IT bill have so far gone nowhere this year. "It is encouraging to see politicians from both parties ... saying so many of the right things and pushing for many of the right things," Mehlman said. "America doesn't get more competitive policies from speeches -- we get them from legislation. The proof is in the passage."
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A U.S. congressman tells the Tech Industry Summit that Congress could pass an immigration reform bill by July.
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US lawmakers are considering amending the Constitution to allow foreign-born American citizens to run for president of the United States.
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A coalition of voting rights groups today called on the U.S. Congress to pass legislation that would require electronic voting machines to have printers attached.
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Government officials, advocacy groups and tech execs gathering at this week's Tech Policy Summit bring a number of issues to the table, but one's rising to the top -- the need for patent reform.
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As Democrats take over leadership of both houses of the U.S. Congress from Republicans, technology industry lobbyists will try again to push for worker visa reform.
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Over 40 technology companies and organizations send a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee asking it to hold public hearings on the controversial Induce Act before moving forward. By Katie Dean.
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WASHINGTONÂ -- With the U.S. Congress winding down its work for 2004, technology lobbying groups are stepping up their push for lawmakers to pass several pieces of legislation, including extensions to a research and development (R&D) tax credit and an Internet access tax moratorium.
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Senators pushing a new immigration policy appealed Sunday to wavering supporters ahead of renewed debate on securing the borders and dealing with 12 million undocumented immigrants.
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Some tech groups are beginning to worry that major IT industry priorities, including patent reform, may lose out to other priorities in the U.S. Congress this year.
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BANGALORE, INDIA - The U.S. government is considering a substantial increase in the number of H-1B visas available to Indian professionals, Robert Blake, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Delhi reportedly told a meeting hosted by the Delhi-based Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India