A bipartisan group of House members are mapping out how to push back on the Trump administration’s plans to potentially charge patent holders a fee, Rep. Deborah Ross said Tuesday.
“To say that you only have to think about what the final product might be, rather than having that spark of creativity, is just the wrong kind of incentive,” the North Carolina Democrat said at Semafor’s Navigating Regulatory Waves event. “We do have a bipartisan group of House members who are pushing back on this; we’re hoping to get our Senate colleagues to push back on it as well.”
Ross, who serves on the House Science and Judiciary Committees, also raised concerns over the Trump administration’s request to fire the director of the Copyright Office, particularly as artificial intelligence firms test the boundaries of fair use rules.
“It is so important that the head of the US Copyright Office is an independent person, because copyright should know no favoritism,” she said.
And Ross threw cold water on the idea of lawmakers passing a federal AI law this Congress: “This Congress can’t even convene.”
“But while Congress can’t act and doesn’t act, it is important that the states act, and they have acted in some pretty important ways,” Ross said.