Innovation is key to America’s economic future and is a primary driver of long-term growth and prosperity. Unfortunately, U.S. companies’ capacity to innovate is being squeezed by the International Trade Commission (ITC), an agency in dire need of reform and modernization.
Under President Biden’s watch, the ITC became an increasingly popular forum for non-practicing entities (NPEs), also known as patent trolls. NPEs file lawsuits at the ITC, a tiny agency that can issue powerful exclusion orders against allegedly infringing imports, blocking their access to the United States when a domestic industry would be affected and – supposedly – the public interest is not harmed. This power comes from a law known as Section 337. NPEs use the threat of such orders as a weapon for extortion—to coerce large financial settlements from productive companies who are, unlike the trolls, actually contributing to American innovation.
Without question, the ITC is being taken advantage of and misused. Patent trolls, who don’t create any products or even come up with new ideas, are manipulating a system intended to protect innovative companies operating in the United States from unfair foreign import competition.
Under President Trump’s administration, the ITC is fulfilling its intended purpose: stopping Chinese suppliers from importing infringing products into the U.S. and unfairly competing in the U.S. marketplace, which harms consumers and the public health and welfare. By February, the ITC had already banned unfair Chinese imports, and it has launched investigations of multiple Chinese companies who threaten both a major U.S. company and an entrepreneurial American start up.
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Removing this unfair import competition from the market is a great victory for President Trump and all of us who care about protecting American innovation and discouraging companies in hostile foreign nations from cheating to try to compete in the United States.
This is exactly how the ITC should work: using exclusion orders to protect American companies from Chinese copycats that don’t play by the rules.
Unfortunately, this instance is a rare exception.
Section 337 investigations at the ITC are supposed to proceed only if a “domestic industry” requirement is met. This requirement states that Section 337 litigation is to be brought by and for the benefit of a domestic U.S. industry that is actually using the intellectual property in dispute. However, this requirement has been loosened, so a complainant at the ITC can gain standing by relying on a licensee’s activities related to a patent, even if the licensee has no interest in blocking imports, or the licensee is not making a product that competes in any way with the imports being threatened by a Section 337 ban. This means that a troll, who does not use the patent to make anything, can still bring a case against productive U.S. based companies, when no U.S. based company with any relationship to the patent wants to bring a case.
Section 337 is also supposed to require a “public interest” test, so that no product ban is put in place if it would harm the public. But the ITC in recent years has refused to meaningfully look at the public interest. Instead, it has just said that protecting intellectual property is broadly in the public interest, ignoring the fact that it is a trade agency, not an IP court. It therefore should take into account the availability of court relief for the complainant (which is virtually always an option), and should instead focus on the impacts of a ban on consumers, the domestic industry, and the economy as a whole.
The Biden administration did little to fix the myriad problems at the ITC. For example, Biden turned a blind eye while patent trolls from Ireland pushed a Section 337 investigation that would have banned 93 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, opening the door for Chinese manufacturers to flood in, while the major manufacturers were all blocked. Using the threat of such a ban, trolls are able to extort outsized settlements from suppliers of accused products. The costs of these settlements are eventually borne by U.S. consumers in the form of higher prices.
This is not how a trade agency designed to protect American industry should operate. It’s time to fix the ITC and ensure it returns to its original mission of promoting American innovation and protecting consumers. And the threat unfortunately continues under President Trump, where it appears that at least four trolls are already trying to take advantage of the ITC and Section 337 through recently filed complaints.
Fortunately, Congress has proposed a legislative fix that would address the issues at the ITC. Key legislation from last Congress should be re-introduced to bring simple fixes to the ITC. The Advancing Americas Interests Act (AAIA) would ensure that patents involved in a Section 337 case have a real tie to an actual American company actively using the patent and concerned about specific imports. This would eliminate the domestic industry loophole commonly employed by patent trolls. AAIA would also ensure that before issuing an exclusion order, the ITC would have to conduct a deep analysis ensuring the order is in the broad public interest.
Congress also should consider the importance of legislation already introduced in this session by Congressman Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet, Congressman Scott Fitzgerald (WI-05), and Congressman Mike Collins (GA-10). HR 1109 – The Litigation Transparency Act of 2025, would reveal which hedge funds, commercial lenders, and sovereign wealth funds are backing the shell companies that bring frivolous litigation to the courts. The ITC needs the same transparency. Congress could provide this through legislation, or the ITC itself could wake up to the problem and itself require this disclosure.
President Trump has set forth a bold vision to protect American innovation and repair the blunders of his predecessor. Bringing simple fixes to the ITC should be at the top of the agenda.
Aiden Buzzetti is the president of the Bull Moose Project. He is also the president of the 1776 Project Foundation.
Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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