OPINION:
The voters took President Trump’s 2016 promise to “drain the swamp” seriously. It was a crucial component of his come-from-behind election victory.
As an outsider, Mr. Trump underestimated the breadth and depth of the odious ooze in which the business of American self-government has become mired. His self-professed proficiency using “the system” was no match for the more experienced manipulators working for decades “inside the Beltway.”
Taking the fight to the swamp critters, Mr. Trump quickly found himself on the receiving end of tougher pushback than he probably expected, even from inside and behind his own lines.
That’s the way life is in the swamp. Even your friends and subordinates can’t be trusted. Everyone has an agenda of their own, especially the permanent government employees, lobbyists, lawyers, academics, think tankers and special interests who live in the dark and feed from the public trough.
The few reforms Mr. Trump managed to implement in his first four years were quickly undone by his successor, President Biden, his autopen and his aides. Together they worked not just to restore the swamp to its previous state but also to make it deeper and murkier than ever.
A notable example of this idea in practice involves allegations of patent abuse by Intel, the microchip manufacturer that has lately been much in the headlines, and Kathi Vidal, who served as director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the Biden administration.
Patent disputes are big business. Millions, sometimes even billions, of dollars are at stake. They are taken very seriously by the participants, the business community, the legal system and the U.S. Constitution. That also makes them something to which the swamp pays close attention.
In this case, what has become a protracted allegation of patent infringement involving Intel began during the Biden presidency. It eventually landed on Ms. Vidal’s desk, where she made a finding that meant Intel did not have to pay a multibillion-dollar jury verdict in a patent infringement case.
Her intervention allowed a couple of what I call “shadowy organizations” to recycle flawed claims that had been rejected by the agency and abandoned in federal court.
It’s important to note that, before being named head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Ms. Vidal enjoyed a formal working relationship with the prominent maker of microchips. That she was allowed to participate at all in the review of the petitions involving it, critics of her determination say, created an apparent conflict of interest that should have led her to recuse herself.
One can certainly imagine a Mr. Biden of long ago (perhaps while chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee instead of president of the United States) levying such a charge with a palpable sense of outrage over the possibility that corporate cronyism had once again reared its ugly head.
That’s typical in the swamp. Powerful and politically connected corporations often receive assistance securing their positions, often at the expense of insurgents and market disruptors. Insiders pull strings for the benefit of friends and influencers. Former, and sometimes even serving, officials use access to shape outcomes. Even if everything the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office did was legitimate and Ms. Vidal was correct on the merits, Washington’s reputation for being a swampy place casts a shadow on it all.
The new Trump administration is working to set things right. In February, acting U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director Coke Morgan Stewart rescinded the policy Ms. Vidal created and relied on to allow the abusive petitions to proceed, but she needs to do more. In a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, property rights advocates accuse his department of continuing to defend “two of the most egregious and high-profile applications” of the rescinded Biden patent policy.
What’s needed, they say, is an immediate request by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to remand the case back to the Commerce Department for review and possible termination instead of continuing to defend the Biden administration’s flawed, tainted and already rescinded decisions in the federal courts.
Until that happens, the case remains mired in the swamp, where the special interests want it.
Ms. Stewart isn’t a swamp critter. So far, at least according to property rights advocates, she has demonstrated bold leadership in protecting the interests of innovators and entrepreneurs by not yielding to the swamp critters trying to keep things off course. As a general rule, the executive branch needs more of that, not less.
Meanwhile, having a new set of eyes on something rarely hurts. A request for a remand of the case would show that the Trump administration is working to ensure all Americans are treated equally and fairly, regardless of their ability to navigate the swamp’s murky waters.
• A Washington-based writer and commentator, Peter Roff is a former U.S. News & World Report columnist and UPI senior political writer now affiliated with several public policy groups. He can be reached by email at RoffColumns AT GMAIL.com and followed on social media @TheRoffDraft.
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