OFF---1NC

T-STRENGTHEN
Our interpretation is that topical affirmatives must increase
the penalties for violations of intellectual property. That’s
supported by the resolution:
1. Strengthen means “increasing.”
Yamamoto et al. 4, Inventor at Osaka, along with Katsutoshi Yamamoto, Jun
Asano, Shinichi Chaen, and Tomohisa Knoishi (Seigo Yamamoto, 2004, “NON-
WOVEN FABRIC AND, A LAMINATE AND BRAIDED MATERIAL USING THE SAME,” Pub.
No.: US 2004/0198127 Al, Appl. No.: 10/481,127, University of Kansas Libraries,
Lexis)
[0047] The term "strengthen" here is defined as increasing the tensile strength and/or
the strength in the thickness direction.

2. Protection means “enforcement” of exclusive economic

rights.
Dagne 14, LL.B; LL.M; JSD; Assistant Professor of Law, Thompson Rivers
University Faculty of Law, Kamloops, BC. (Tesh, 2014, ARTICLE: PROTECTING
TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE IN INTERNATIONAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW:
IMPERATIVES FOR PROTECTION AND CHOICE OF MODALITIES, 14 J. Marshall Rev.
Intell. Prop. L. 25, 30, Lexis accessed online via KU libraries)
The word "protection" often creates confusion as it means very different things in strict intellectual property law
"Protection" in intellectual property is usually perceived as a
and in ordinary usage.
means enforcing private, exclusive economic rights to a specific creation
in order to prevent others from using or reproducing it. "Protection" of TK, on the
other hand, implies protecting the whole social, ecological, cultural and spiritual context of that knowledge so that it
continues to be produced and reproduced.

That requires damages OR an injunction.

Benham 21, Professor of Law, Texas Tech University School of Law. (Dustin B.,
Winter 2021, “ARTICLE: Foundational and Contemporary Court Confidentiality”, 86
Mo. L. Rev. 211, 230. Lexis accessed online via KU libraries)
If a party breaches a secrecy agreement by revealing confidential information, the party seeking
enforcement may seek damages for breach or an injunction. 106 Both remedies
invoke court power, through either a damages award in an enforceable judgment or an order that a party breaches
at the peril of contempt. Either of these scenarios, most particularly an injunction against speech, would seem to
implicate the First Amendment. 107

Violation: the aff does not increase enforcement

Vote negative for limits. Lengthening, modifying, and granting
IP protections are untenable AFF areas on top of small
modifications to IP administration, eligibility, and holdings.
 OFF---1NC
A-SPECULATION THEORY
Interpretation: plan texts must specify the agent of action and
be based in the scope of their solvency evidence.

Violation: their plan text does not specify agent of action.

1. Competition -- no counterplan, disad, or K competition

because they can shift advocacy because lack of a textually
stable advocacy ― decks fairness

2. Not enough time for cross X, pre-round prep, which decks

neg ability to prep for the infinite number of affirmatives,
without consistent solvency advocates ― prevents ALL
negative engagement.
3 . Clash and Education – The aff kills all education because they’re
not using evidence specific to topic killing core debate
 OFF---1NC
CAP K
Capitalism is unsustainable.
Fraser 21 — professor of philosophy and politics at the New School for Social Research, interviewed by
Martín Mosquera, (Nancy, 9/10/21, “Nancy Fraser: ‘Cannibal Capitalism’ is on Our Horizon,”
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/09/nancy-fraser-cannibal-capitalism-interview)

As you point out, the

COVID crisis is a dramatic example of how these externalities interact in complicated
ways with capitalism, leading to the kind of capitalist crises that you’ve described as
“ multidimensional .” Elsewhere, you’ve also suggested that, at least since 2008, the current stage of financialized,
neoliberal capitalism is undergoing a crisis — perhaps terminal — that could eventually mean a historical
shift to a different form of capitalist accumulation. How do you evaluate the current crisis? NF I want to underline
several points that are already implicit in the way you pose the question. One is that we should distinguish between sectoral crises and general
crises. A sectoral crisis means that there is one significant area in a given capitalist regime of accumulation or phase of capitalist development
that is overtly dysfunctional, while others appear to be more or less okay. We often tend to think of economic crises as sectoral in just this way.
Historians could point to numerous examples of such sectoral crises, which pertain to one realm of society only. But that’s different from a
general crisis of the whole social order. The concept of a general crisis suggests a convergence or overdetermination of several major impasses
and strands of dysfunction. Not just one sector, but all or nearly all major societal sectors are in crisis and are exacerbating one another. That
was the case in the 1930s, for example. I suspect that we are living through a general crisis of this sort now. Certainly, we
have seen severe forms of economic crisis , like the 2007–8 financial near-meltdown. And although it
may have looked as if our rulers found a way to patch that up, that crisis is not really solved. Pervasive financialization
remains a ticking time bomb . But, as the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report shows, our
economic woes have converged with another very severe, even catastrophic crisis: namely, global
warming . This ecological crisis has been brewing for a long time and is now becoming palpable .
More and more segments of the global population, including segments that have been relatively insulated from its worst effects, are awakening
to it. There is also, as I said before, a crisis of social reproduction, which is stressing or depleting our capacities for creating, caring for, and
sustaining human beings: childcare and eldercare, education and health care. As states disinvest from public provision, and as depressed wage
levels force us to devote more hours to paid work, the system gobbles up the time and energy needed for care
work . So, that sector too is in crisis, especially in pandemic conditions. One could say that COVID has greatly exacerbated the
preexisting crisis of social reproduction. But it would be just as true to say that the preexisting crisis of social reproduction (including
disinvestment from public health infrastructure and social provision) has greatly exacerbated the effects of COVID .
Finally, we also face a major political crisis . This is, at one level, a crisis of governance, meaning that even
powerful states like the United States lack the capacity to solve the problems the system generates. They
are depleted , paralyzed by gridlock and outgunned by megacorporations , which have captured
virtually all regulatory agencies and engineered huge tax cuts for themselves and for the rich. Deprived
of revenue for decades, states have allowed their infrastructures to crumble and have depleted their stockpiles of essential public goods, such
as personal protective equipment (PPE). They are, by definition, unable to deal with questions like climate change , which
are not containable within any jurisdictional borders. The upshot is an acute crisis of governance at the structural level. But there’s also a
political crisis at another level, a crisis of hegemony in the Gramscian sense: the widespread defection from politics as usual, from the
established political parties and elites who have been tarnished by association with neoliberalization , and the
appearance of previously unthinkable populisms — some potentially emancipatory, others decidedly not. The upshot is that we now face a
tangle of multiple crises: an economic crisis, a crisis of social reproduction , an ecological crisis,
and a two-sided political crisis. To my mind, this adds up to a general crisis of capitalist society. Its effects pop
out all over, first here, then there, then somewhere else, like a metastasizing cancer. Every effort to patch up one outbreak
only leads to others , afflicting other sectors, regions, populations, until the whole social body is
overwhelmed . The experience of general crisis has become palpable for many people, but that doesn’t mean that it will produce a total
breakdown or revolutionary climax any time soon. Capitalist crises can go on for decades, unfortunately. One could say that the whole first half
of the twentieth century up until the defeat of fascism at the end of World War II was just one long, roiling general crisis of liberal-colonial
capitalism. So, we might be in for a long slog.

Strengthening intellectual property feeds into capitalism.

Borghi 23 — Professor of law, Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management, Bournemouth
University, (Maurizio, 10/31/23, “Commodification of intangibles in post-IP capitalism: rethinking the
counter-hegemonic discourse,” European Law Open, Vol. 2, Iss. 2, pp. 434-447)

The ‘ great transformation ’ and the making of IP law The IP regime as we know it today took much of
its shape, in so-called industrialised countries , in the second half of 19th Century. It is the result of a law-governed
process of enabling market forces to extract value from instances that are not even ‘things’ , let
alone commodities : actions like writing a book, composing a melody, inventing a new device,
designing the shape of an object, indicating the source of origin of goods – all these actions and more,
abstracted from the respective intellectual commons to which they belong, could be transformed into
tradeable commodities by operation of law.Footnote4 Such commodification is the result of a process that
coincides, historically, with the rise of industrial capitalism and the market economy . To be sure, patents ,
copyright , and trademarks have been around at least since the 16th Century, when the market economy did not yet exist, let
alone a capitalist market economy. In fact, not only can the actions mentioned above be protected by law while remaining an
integral part of their respective intellectual commons and without being abstracted from those commons
and commodified,Footnote5 but also even markets in products resulting from those actions can subsist
and thrive in the absence of capitalist forms of production.Footnote6 So capitalism did not ‘invent’ patents,
copyright and trademarks: rather, it took them from the existing arsenal of legal tools and transformed them
gradually into forms of property over tradeable commodities – and into commodities themselves to be exchanged in
the marketplace. These commodities are not less ‘fictitious’ than the three factors of production – land, labour, and capital – described as such
by Karl Polanyi in his seminal work on the ‘great transformation’.Footnote7 Historically, the symbolic landmark of this first transformation is
represented by the international treaties signed at the height of the age of classic liberalism and free trade, namely the Paris Convention on
industrial property of 1883 and the Berne Convention on literary and artistic property of 1886.Footnote8 The success of the resulting IP regime
– which was destined to remain in force, essentially unaltered in its structural elements, for a good century – depended on the tacit assumption
that legitimate competing interests over intangible commodities created by law – works, inventions, badges of origin etc – can be defined and
balanced ex ante by the law itself. Such ex ante determination operated in various ways, for example by establishing that exclusive rights over
certain protected subject matter have limited duration, limited scope (eg expressions and not ideas) and are subject to exceptions (eg fair use in
copyright, government’s use in patent law, etc) or to other provisions that temper the exclusionary nature of property rights (eg compulsory
licensing). By defining de jure the dividing line between what can be claimed as private property and what should remain in the commons, the
law enacted a commodification of intangibles that was strictly functional to the correct operation of the market. From a Polanyian perspective,
thelimits embedded in IP law can be interpreted as part of the ‘ protective counter-movement ’ that arises in
response to unrestrained marketisation and the degradation resulting from treating human life and nature
activities as mere commodities. Such counter-movement does not just protect society and nature from the destructive forces of the market,
but is also required for the continued existence of the market structures themselves vis-à-vis the threat of self-destruction. In Polanyi’s words:
For a century the dynamics of modern society were governed by a double movement: the market expanded continuously but this movement
was met by a countermovement checking the expansion in definite directions. [This countermovement] was more than the usual defensive
behaviour of a society faced with change; it was a reaction against a dislocation which would have destroyed the very organization of
production that the market had called into being.Footnote9 The double movement results from the action of two opposing organising
principles, namely economic liberalism and laissez-faire on the one side, pushing towards the establishment of a self-regulating market for the
factors of production (land, labour and capital), and the ‘principle of social protection’ on the other side, aiming at the ‘conservation of man and
nature as well as productive organization’ by means of protective legislation and other regulatory techniques.Footnote10 Commodification of
intangibles followed a similar pattern, with market forces on the one side pressing for the complete alienation of creative actions from their
original collective meaning and their fixation into mere exchange values, and societal forces on the other side seeking to protect universal
freedom to access intellectual commons through regulation, legislation and resistance.Footnote11 The
IP regime that took shape in the
second half of 19th Century can be seen as the outcome of the double movement consisting of capitalism’s seizure of
economy and society’s regulative reaction. In this way, the resulting IP system operated a commodification
of certain intangibles while at the same time defining the boundaries of such commodification – and all this
by keeping a neutral stance and leaving entirely to the market the task of determining the exchange value of the thus created
commodities. Otherwise put, IP law established itself as an integral component of the rule-set of the
capitalism game – a component whose relevance grew exponentially, without changing qualitatively its nature, in the course of the
20th Century. 3. The second transformation and the age of IP expansionism The institutional structures that, within the IP regime, made
possible a defence of the freedom to access intellectual commons against unlimited propertisation remained relatively unchallenged for a good
part of the 20th Century up to post-World War II ‘regulated capitalism’.Footnote12 These structures started shaking at the end of the 1970s
with the transition to a new phase of capitalism dominated by a medley of political, economic and intellectual approaches which is now
commonly referred to as ‘neoliberalism’.Footnote13 At
the heart of neoliberalism is the basic idea that human well-
being can be best advanced by liberating individual, instead of collective, entrepreneurial forces, and that
the precondition to achieve this is an institutional framework characterised by strong private property rights
and weak regulatory barriers. Neoliberalism does not necessarily imply a weakened role of the state vis-à-vis the ‘market forces’ – as per the
hegemonic narrative that began to take shape in those years – but rather a new and different role of the state in the capitalist system. As far as
IP law is concerned, the most visible consequence of the transition from regulated to neoliberal capitalism was that the interests of the owners
of the means of production – which in the classic IP regime represented only one of the competing interests in intangible commodities – were
now taken directly onboard by the state. In other words, the neoliberal state diverted the IP regime from its neutral,
rule-setting role and converted it to a pure instrument of capital accumulation . Indeed, according to the new
hegemonic ideology of IP law-making, inspired by neoliberal economic theories, strong property rights over intangible
commodities are the necessary incentives to release individual entrepreneurial forces which in turn
ensure expansion , growth and market competitiveness . The ideology triggered a legislative process starting in
the 1980s and 1990s in USA and in EuropeFootnote14 as an erosion of the limits to commodification imposed under the classic IP regime,
which paved the way to the expansion of exclusive rights into every corner of the society and of the globe
– a process whose symbolic landmark is represented by the TRIPs Agreement 1994.Footnote15 Legislations of states under the
influence of neo-liberal ideology assisted informational capitalism in bringing commodification of intangibles to a
new level , both quantitatively and qualitatively. Examples of IP expansionism abound: broadening of the scope of patent
subject matter,Footnote16 extension of copyright duration,Footnote17 extended protection for pharmaceutical patents,Footnote18
world-wide enforceability of patents and copyrights (with increasingly high standards of protection imposed on low-income
countries),Footnote19 extended trademark protection for ‘famous’ brands,Footnote20 introduction of new IP rights (semiconductor
chips,Footnote21 sui generis database right),Footnote22 establishment of stronger and more effective enforcement measures and
remedies.Footnote23 Seen from the angle of the distinction between private property and the public domain, as established within the
traditional IP regime, the process of IP expansionism appears as the latest frontier of a law-driven plunder of the
commons .Footnote24 This was not just a quantitative empowerment of existing rights, but a transformation of the very raison d’être of
those rights. In fact, the process of plunder is consistent with the changing nature of IP law in the hands of neoliberal states, which loses its
original neutral rule-setting character to become a mere instrument of value extraction and capital accumulation. It can be observed that,
within the logic of never-ending capital accumulation, no boundaries can be set to the expansion
of instruments that make accumulation possible.Footnote25 This inherent indefinability of limits to IP expansion is
captured implicitly in the language of legislators and courts alike. A case in point is the proclamation of ensuring ‘a high level of protection’ that
features in key EU directives and is regularly reiterated in the judgements of the European Court.Footnote26 The judiciary has interpreted the
expression as requiring generally a ‘broad’ interpretation of the property rights harmonised by the EU legislator.Footnote27 Yet, in the absence
of a defined yardstick, the concept of ‘highness’, as referred to the quantum of protection to be ensured by property rights, cannot function as
a meaningful hermeneutic principle. It is rather a blunt assertion of an imperative: that of ensuring that the interests protected by IP rights are
given default priority over any other competing interests. The quantum of protection is at liberty of expanding indefinitely to ensure that such
priority is met. In its abstractness, the language of the legislator seconds the logic of capital accumulation in that, by definition, no ‘high level’ is
ever high enough.Footnote28 Within the legal framework inspired by neoliberal ideology, commodification of intangibles loses
the character of a legal fiction strictly functional to the operation of markets in works, inventions and other
intellectual instances and turns into a never-ending task that law is permanently summoned to achieve
(and is never good enough at achieving) on behalf of capital accumulation .

Vote neg for global syndicalism---pressures towards socialist state action are building,
forces the hand of monopolies.
Cecilia Rikap 21. Professor of Economics and Coordinator of YSI States and Markets Working Group,
Institute for New Economic Thinking. “Tilting the Scale Against Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism.”
Capitalism, Power and Innovation Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism Uncovered. Routledge. 2021. 287-
289

Capitalism is a system based on asymmetries and inequalities (of income, wealth, between classes, genders, races,
countries and more). Quite striking for a system born from the motto “Liberté, égalité, fraternité”. As time passes by, this broken
promise of modernity becomes all the more apparent. Inequalities deepen as knowledge is
monopolized, digital surveillance reinforces firms and states control capacities over workers and citizens,
and political conflicts never cease – with the US-China tech cold war at the current epicentre. Social
disrupts are an expected recurring outcome, and we have seen them everywhere in the 21st century. The
specific motives differed, but there is a common root: people are fed up with capitalism’s growing inequalities, with a
stagnant or even declining “middle class” in developed countries for several decades already and the
highest gains accumulating at the global level for those in the richest 5% (Milanovic, 2016). There is another shared feature;
demonstrations are increasingly being organized online. The same technology that is used for surveillance, for
broadcasting extreme right and even fascist ideas, and that drives the USChina world hegemony conflict, is also being used as a
counterbalancing weapon. Internet, particularly social networks, is a powerful tool for the organization
of grassroots movements. Workers’ unions can also learn from each other’s experiences online. The
absence or weakness of unions and social movements in some parts of the world has benefited
intellectual monopolies rentiership and predation. For instance, hiring workers with a vendor contract not
only hides the working relation (see Chapter 10) but also impedes unionization as it currently stands. Still,
unions are adapting and workers organizing. In 2018, Google employees managed to stop the company
from renewing an artificial intelligence contract with the Pentagon and to cancel its plans for a censored search engine
for China. And, in 2020, 2,000 employees urged the company to cease selling technology to the US police after
George Floyd’s killing. These initiatives should be taken by workers in other companies and contribute to
unionization. Unions should be reconceived as a political actor capable of exercising their influence beyond
wage claims. Workers’ organization is indispensable to counterbalance the power of intellectual
monopolies, given both their global reach and states’ internal contradictions and limitations. Peripheral
countries should cease competing to attract outsourcing and offshoring by allowing worse wages and
working conditions. As mentioned above in this chapter, world cooperation agreements to establish minimum labour regulations,
forbidding new and old forms of informality and granting minimum working conditions are urgent.
However, these agreements require great social pressures to take place. When it comes to transforming
capitalism, social disrupts, grassroots social movements and unions play a crucial role. To illustrate their
paramount importance, let us briefly consider taxes. It is crystal clear that the global taxing system has failed. As pointed out in Chapters 7 and
10, global intellectual monopolies declare profits and IPRs in tax havens and use tax loopholes to minimize
paid taxes. Global tax reform should consider the separation between ownership and control. Intellectual monopolies control production
and innovation networks beyond their legal ownership and have the capacity to trickle down the burden of taxes. However, the
intertwined relationship between global intellectual monopolies and their home (core) states renders
highly unlikely to accomplish such global tax reform without intense social pressure. Even the recent US
corporate tax reform was not – at least so far – successful in this respect (Clausing, 2020). Then, as far as tax havens are not eliminated, there
will still be room for tax avoidance and evasion (Zucman, 2015). Countries
acting as tax havens will not comply with a
global reform unless huge social disrupt forces them to do so. Additionally, workers’ protests must be
coordinated at the level of the global production network because the production unit is no longer the
factory but the network. The same applies to global innovation networks. Intellectual monopolies’
recognized employees have greater bargaining power than workers in subordinate firms , which are precisely
those that generally need a more urgent improvement in their salaries and working conditions. “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing
to lose but your chains” (Marx & Engels, 1848) can and must become an everyday reality for the French Revolution motto to be more than
aspirational.
 OFF---1NC
CHEVRON CP
The United States [USPTO] ought to significantly enforce [Aff
plan] based on agency interpretation of current intellectual
property rights protection

The Supreme Court ought to

-rule that the lack [plan] renders federal law ambiguous
-not strike down the agency action

The CP re-establishes Chevron. Deference is a prerequisite to

aff solvency.
Melissa Wasserman 13, Assistant Professor of Law and Richard W. and Marie L.
Corman Scholar, University of Illinois College of Law. J.D., New York University
School of Law, Ph.D., Princeton University. William. & Mary, “The Changing Guard of
Patent Law: Chevron Deference for the PTO”, L. Rev. 1959 2012-2013.
Yet, as criticism toward the patent system has grown, so too have the challenges to this unusual power dynamic.6
lopsided institutional structure is the
An increasing number of commentators believe this
root cause of the patent system's systemic failures.7 [footnote 7 text: 7. See, e.g., John
M. Golden, Patentable Subject Matter and Institutional Choice, 89 TEX. L. REV. 1041, 1075 (2011) (noting that
courts have struggled with patentable subject matter inquiries and that the state of jurisprudence could be
improved by granting the PTO rulemaking authority over patentable subject matter); Joseph Scott Miller, Substance,
the courts should
Procedure, and the Divided Patent Power, ADMIN. L. REV., Winter 2011, at 31 (arguing that
take a more deferential approach in determining whether a rule is substantive or
procedural, the result of which would leave the PTO with ample discretion to
manage the prosecution process); Arti K. Rai, Engaging Facts and Policy: A Multi-Institutional Approach
to Patent System Reform, 103 COLUM. L. REV. 1035, 1040 (2003) ("The ostensibly discrete problems of our patent
institutions stem from an initial mistake in institutional design."); Sarah Tran, Administrative Law, Patents, and
the Federal Circuit's overly
Distorted Rules, 80 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 831, 839-40 (2012) (arguing that
narrow view of the PTO's rule-making powers "has impeded innovation and
the express goal of Article I of the U.S. Constitution to promote 'the Progress of
Science and useful Arts"' (quoting U.S. CONST. art. I, § 8, cl. 8)); Wasserman, supra note 4, at 420-29
(arguing that the structural relationship between the PTO and the Federal Circuit has inflated the boundaries of
patentability)./end footnote 7 text]. An even larger contingency of scholars support reforms that would shift greater
power to the PTO.8 The cries for institutional reform culminated in 2011 when Congress enacted the historic
The AIA provided the first major overhaul to the patent
LeahySmith America Invents Act (AIA).9
system in sixty years and undeniably increased the stature of the PTO by granting
the Agency a host of new responsibilities, such as fee-setting authority" and the ability to conduct
new adjudicatory proceedings in which patent rights may be obtained or challenged.1' This Article contends,
the AIA alters the
however, that commentators have generally failed to recognize the extent to which
fundamental power dynamic between the Federal Circuit and the PTO. Although
scholars acknowledge that the AIA bestows a glut of new powers upon the Agency,12 they have nearly
uniformly concluded that "Congress stopped short of allowing the PTO to
interpret the core provisions of the Patent Act-those that affect the scope of
what is patentable."'" Though Stuart Benjamin and Arti Rai have observed that certain
congressional bestowals of adjudicatory authority may entitle the PTO's legal
interpretations of the Patent Act to strong judicial deference,14 [footnote 14 text: 14. See
Stuart Minor Benjamin & Arti K. Rai, Who's Afraid of the APA? What the Patent System Can Learn from
Administrative Law, 95 GEO. L.J. 269, 327-28 (2007) ('The various postgrant review proceedings that have been
proposed would be trial-type procedures on the record that bear the hallmarks of formal adjudication-most notably,
a proceeding before an administrative judge at which the parties present evidence and cross-examination, with the
judge's decision based on the record. Such proceedings would have sufficient formality to satisfy Meads test for
if Congress created these procedures and said nothing
application of Chevron deference. Thus,
more, Chevron deference would seem to apply to them ." (footnotes omitted)); Arti K. Rai,
Essay, Patent Validity Across the Executive Branch: Ex Ante Foundations for Policy Development, 61 DUKE L.J. 1237,
1280 (2012) ("In fact, the executive branch could also use the postgrant-review authority conferred upon the PTO
by the AIA to go one step further. As a doctrinal matter, under current Supreme Court precedent interpreting the
contexts in which Chevron applies, the government could ask for Chevron deference toward decisions made in
postgrant review proceedings."). However, neither of these articles analyzed the language of the AIA, applied or
acknowledged the three-way circuit split on when formal adjudications are triggered, or performed any analysis of
when a grant of formal adjudicatory authority carries the ability to speak with the force of law./end footnote text]
this Article provides the first indepth exploration of whether the actual powers granted by the AIA would result in
the PTO becoming the primary interpreter of the core patentability requirements. This Article concludes that the AIA
rejects over two hundred years of court dominance in patent policy by anointing the PTO as the chief expositor of
substantive patent law standards. In general, the patent system has historically suffered from a lack of serious
Supreme Court intervention in 1999 made
engagement with administrative law,15 even though
clear that standard administrative law norms-including the Administrative Procedure
Act-apply to the PTO. 16 Applying administrative law principles to the AIA
provides that the PTO's legal interpretations of the Patent Act, as announced by its new
adjudicatory proceedings, are entitled to the highly deferential standard of review
articulated in Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. 7 As this Article
argues, this deference is a normatively desirable outcome.18 Making the PTO the
primary interpreter of the core patentability standards ushers
the patent system into the modern administrative era, which has long recognized
the deficiencies associated with judge-driven policy. 9 This provides
the institutional foundation for infusing economic policy into the patent
system, enabling the tailoring of patentability standards to advance the system's
constitutionally mandated goal: the promotion of innovation.
 OFF---1NC
Court Clog DA
Modernization is solving court backlog in the short and long
term
Judicial Shop 24
Judicial Shop “Discover Strategies To Make Court Run More Efficiently“, https://judicialshop.com/blogs/news/discover-strategies-to-make-court-run-more-
efficiently, 2-8-2024,

increasing resources for conflict-free representation,

Improving evidence management,

and expanding ways to provide short and long-term relief for

overburdened courts are crucial strategies for enhancing access to justice. These measures can help
streamline legal proceedings and ensure that individuals have adequate support in navigating the court system. IMPROVED
EVIDENCE MANAGEMENT Improved evidence management is critical for streamlining court processes. Digital evidence, with its complexity and volume,
necessitates efficient handling to expedite case resolution. Smart court characteristics include ensuring fairness and efficiency of the judiciary, which can
be achieved through improved evidence management strategies. This includes digitalization of evidence storage and retrieval systems to enhance
accessibility and streamline the presentation of evidence in civil cases. Moreover, modernized evidence management aligns with promoting
procedural fairness within the American legal system by ensuring that all parties have equal access to relevant information. Implementing user-friendly
electronic filing systems coupled with robust data quality measures further enhances transparency and ensures that evidence is accurately
handled throughout legal proceedings. INCREASED RESOURCES FOR CONFLICT-FREE REPRESENTATION Civil courts require additional resources to
provide conflict-free representation, ensuring all parties have access to sound legal guidance. Boosting funding for legal aid and pro bono programs is
essential to diminish the imbalance in representation and ensure fair outcomes for all individuals involved in legal proceedings. Studies have shown that
access to counsel directly impacts the fairness of trials, making it imperative to allocate more resources towards this critical aspect of justice.
Furthermore, expanding support for conflict-free representation can significantly enhance the public's trust in the legal system, as individuals are provided
with equitable opportunities for adequate representation. EXPANSION OF WAYS TO PROVIDE SHORT AND LONG-TERM RELIEF FOR OVERBURDENED

COURTS Toalleviate the burden on overburdened courts, a strategic plan by the

Federal Judiciary focuses on expanding ways to offer both short and long-term relief. This
involves innovative policies developed due to the impact of the COVID-19
pandemic, aiming to keep courts open and ensure equitable access to court-related services. Embracing
technology has been pivotal for courts, not only in staying operational but
also in advancing participation rates and facilitating efficient dispute
resolution. These strategies are crucial steps toward achieving more effective court operations, relieving congestion, and improving overall
fairness in judicial processes. Moreover, enhancing access to justice initiatives - such as improved evidence management and increased resources for
conflict-free representation – play an essential role in this expansion effort.

Expanding IP law uniquely incentivizes patent trolling which

floods the courts with frivolous litigation
Bell and Parchomovsky 14
Bell, Abraham-- Professor, Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law; Professor of Law,
University of San Diego School of Law; and Gideon Parchomovsky-- Robert G.
Fuller, Jr. Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School and Professor,
Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law. 2014. “Reinventing Copyright and Patent.”
Michigan Law Review 113 (2): 231–78. https://search-ebscohost-
com.gonzaga.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?
direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url,uid&db=lgs&AN=99133160&site=ehost-live.
Intellectual property systems all over the world are modeled on a one size-fits-all
principle. Under current patent law, for instance, an invention that meets the
patentability criteria is entitled to protection of the law for a specified period.1
Big inventions or small inventions, valuable inventions or worthless
inventions—all receive the same scope of protection, and the same variety of
legal remedies, for the same period of time. Essentially, all inventions are equal
under the law. While one size fits all is easy to administer, it generates two kinds of
problems for the patent system. First, the equality principle gives all creators access
to the same remedies, even when those remedies create perverse incentives.
Scholarly literature has focused on the phenomenon of “patent trolls”—patent
holders who have no interest in marketing or manufacturing their
inventions but simply wait for apparent breaches of the patent in order to
sue.2 While scholars have characterized trolling as a problem of underproductive
patents,3 we view it as a problem of incentives. Patents that are enforced by
trolls could potentially be valuable to society, but the one-size fits-all system’s
excessive litigation rewards incentivize trolls to hoard their patents for
opportunistic litigation rather than license them for productive use.
Specifically, by providing uniformly large remedies even for very small
inventions, the judicial system allows patent trolls to reap more profit
through infringement suits than through selling their inventions on the
market. This is not intrinsically problematic, but the judicial system is not
cost free. Society subsidizes judges, courtrooms, and enforcement
measures while litigating parties bear only some of the costs themselves.4 In
the case of patent trolls, these societal subsidies encourage parties to conduct
their transactions in the courtroom when the optimal forum is actually private
market transactions. In many other cases, partly because the costs of litigation
are asymmetric and must be paid in part even by prevailing parties, the
threat of these litigation costs can force parties into inefficient transactions .5

Clogging the federal courts crushes democracy

Jawando & Wright 15
Michele L. Jawando—Vice President of Legal Progress for Center for American Progress; Sean Wright— policy analyst, Center for American Progress, “Why
Courts Matter,” https://www.americanprogress.org/article/why-courts-matter-2-2/, 04/13/2015

No matter the issue—whether it’s marriage equality, voting rights, health

care, or immigration—the U.S. federal courts play a vital role in the lives of all
Americans. There are two types of courts: state and federal. The federal courts are those established to decide disagreements that
concern the Constitution, congressional legislation, and certain state-based disputes. Although most Americans are familiar with the lifetime
appointment of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, many are surprised to learn that more than 900 judges have lifetime appointments to serve on lower
federal courts, where they hear many more cases than their counterparts on the Supreme Court. Each year, the Supreme Court reviews around 100 of the

courts hear the majority

most significant cases out of the nearly 30 million cases resolved by state and federal courts. These

of cases and, most of the time, they have the final say. That is why, along with
the Supreme Court’s justices, the judges who sit on the nation’s federal district and circuit courts
are so important. At any given time, there are vacancies on U.S. federal courts that need to be filled. If
they are not filled, federal caseloads get backlogged, and as a result, Americans’
access to justice is limited. As of March 9, 2015, there were 50 current vacancies on U.S. federal courts. These seats have
been vacant for a total of 22,222 days, resulting in a backlog of 29,892 cases. The Administrative Office of the United States Courts has designated 23 of
these pending vacancies as judicial emergencies, meaning that filling them is a critical task. As the Center for American Progress has noted, “in practical

where judges are overworked and where justice is being

terms,” these are the judicial districts “

significantly delayed for the American public. The Constitution dictates that the president appoints federal judges while the
Senate advises and consents on these appointments. The result is a delicate balance between the desires of the White House, deference to home-state
senators, and the power of the party that controls the Senate. Recently, politics has played a big role in the pace at which judicial nominees are
confirmed. In an attempt to slow President Barack Obama’s effect on the federal courts, Senate Republicans have obstructed the president’s judicial
nominees at unprecedented levels by attempting to prevent or delay a vote through filibustering a record number of nominees and making them await
confirmation for long periods of time. The reason many Senate Republicans have played politics with President Obama’s judicial nominees is because
they know the dramatic impact the judiciary can have on policies, including marriage equality and reproductive choice. The fewer judges that President
Obama appoints to fill federal judicial vacancies, the greater leverage the next president will have in deciding the make-up of these courts. Yet in the face
of unprecedented obstruction, President Obama has made great strides to fill vacancies and to ensure that federal judges meaningfully reflect the
dynamic diversity of the nation. A diverse federal bench improves the quality of justice and instills confidence that judges understand the
real-world implications of their decisions. Americans have different backgrounds, as well as an assorted set of professional, educational, and life
experiences. It is important that the federal courts reflect the diversity of the public they serve. As Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor once
wrote, “The dynamism of any diverse community depends not only on the diversity itself but on promoting a sense of belonging among those who
formerly would have been considered and felt themselves outsiders.”Furthermore, scholars have found that judges often change their minds during the
deliberative process. In one study, researchers concluded that having a woman on the panel affected “elements of both deliberation and bargaining—

alternative perspectives, persuasive argument, and horse trading.” Not only do the federal courts play a vital role
in preserving democracy, but who sits on the courts has an effect too.

Democratic backsliding causes extinction-- there are multiple

scenarios
Orts 18
Dr. Eric W. Orts-- Guardsmark Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics and Professor of Management at The Wharton School, University of
Pennsylvania, MA in Political Science from the New School for Social Research, LLM from Columbia Law School, JD from the University of Michigan School
of Law, BA in Government from Oberlin College, “Foreign Affairs: Six Future Scenarios (and a Seventh)”, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/foreign-affairs-six-
future-scenarios-seventh-eric-orts/, 6/27/2018.

another possible future that the Foreign Affairs scenarios do

7. Fascist Nationalism. There is

not contemplate, and it’s a dark world in which Trump, Putin, Xi, Erdogan,
and others construct regimes that are authoritarian and nationalist.
Fascism is possible in the United States and elsewhere if big business can be
seduced by promises of riches in return for the institutional keys to democracy.
Perhaps Foreign Affairs editors are right to leave this dark world out, for it would
be very dark: nationalist wars with risks of escalation into global nuclear
conflict, further digital militarization (even Terminator-style scenarios of
smart military robots), and unchecked climate disasters.
 OFF---1NC
DEVOLUTION CP
The United States federal government should:
---devolve authority over intellectual property rights to the states,
---the states should strengthen IPR protection by aff plan minus strengthen
protections.

States solve competition and innovation better than the plan.

Guan 24 [Taori; Chicago Journal of International Law; “ARTICLE: Cooperative Federalism and Patent
Legislation: A Study Comparing China and the United States.”;
advance-lexis-com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/api/document?collection=analytical-
materials&id=urn:contentItem:6BBP-B4N1-JC8V-42D0-00000-00&context=1519360; Lowell-CS]

This Article compares the patent legislative power allocation models in China and the U.S. In terms of evolutionary paths, the U.S.
transitioned from a decentralized model where patent legislative power resided with the states, to a
centralized model which consolidated this power at the federal level. Within the realm of patent
legislation, there is no collaboration between the federal and state government s. Conversely, China moved
from a centralized model, where patent legislative power was concentrated in the central government,
to a semi-decentralized model, with coexistence between the patent legislative power of the central and
local governments.

This Article posits that China's

semi-decentralized patent legislation model manifests key elements of
cooperative federalism, embodying power sharing between central and local governments as they
collaboratively address issues related to innovation. However, the nature of the cooperation between China's central and local governments is
distinctive. Unlike the U.S. federal system, where states enjoy significant autonomy, China's central government assumes a dominant role, a
consequence of its unitary state structure. Local governments supplement the central government's constructed system by further developing
it, tailoring it to local conditions under the central government's guidance and supervision.

Compared to the current centralized patent legislation model in the U.S., this Article suggests that the
intricate structure of a semi-decentralized patent legislation model might be better equipped to cater to
the diverse needs of local industries and inventor communities, and to spur local competition and
institutional innovation. It can do this while complying with international treaty requirements, given
that national patent laws maintain a level of protection no lower than these treaties necessitate and
that local patent laws do not decrease the protection level of the national laws. However, the model also faces
challenges regarding potential inconsistency, rent-seeking behaviors, and local protectionism.

[*304] The examination of this semi-decentralized patent legislation model opens new avenues for
understanding legislative diversity, stimulating further scholarly discourse. Beyond introducing a novel case study in intellectual
property law within a particular national context, it also offers fresh perspectives on the institutional designs of federal and unitary
governments in addressing innovation issues.
 OFF---1NC
Farm Bill DA
The Farm Bill is heading towards passage now, but it will require a bipartisan
compromise.
David Sivak 5-26. Manages the Congress and campaigns team at the Washington Examiner, where he
previously led the copy desk for three years. "Debbie Stabenow fights for Senate legacy with farm bill
standoff". Colorado Springs Gazette. 5-26-2024. https://gazette.com/news/wex/debbie-stabenow-
fights-for-senate-legacy-with-farm-bill-standoff/article_e65ad08b-ffe3-5b0b-843a-48520597ca42.html

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) risks leaving the Senate at the end of the year with a big question mark hanging over her almost three-
decade career in Washington. As the top Democrat on the Agriculture Committee, she is waging her third and final fight over
the farm bill, which sets agriculture and nutrition policy every five years, yet she may retire with the latest package stuck in limbo. The
central holdup is hardly new. Republicans, who control the House, have sought to restrict the growth of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program, also known as food stamps, after the farm bill ballooned to $1.5 trillion in recent years. The entitlement makes up 82% of the total
bill. Meanwhile,
fights over “climate-smart” conservation funding and price supports for certain
commodities have also delayed the legislation. Stabenow said she would dedicate herself to passing the current farm bill in
announcing her retirement from the Senate a year ago. But the impasse means she may not be at the negotiating table when the full, five-year
reauthorization is finally approved. Congress has already punted on the bill once, passing a one-year extension last fall, and could do so again
later this year. Stabenow, 74, has broken a series of barriers in her career, including her election as the first woman to represent Michigan in
the Senate. She will end her tenure as the No. 3 Democrat in leadership in her capacity as chairwoman of the Democratic Policy and

parties say it is still possible to get

Communications Committee. But the farm bill is one of her biggest policy legacies. Both
a deal done before the Sept. 30 deadline. Each chamber has put out competing proposals, while the House
passed its version out of committee on Thursday in a largely party-line vote. Yet Stabenow’s retirement from the Senate is forcing her to decide
whether to get the best deal she can in divided government or risk a weaker hand for Democrats in the next Congress. The decision is not a
hard one for Stabenow, she suggested in an interview. She would rather extend the current farm bill, which she helped negotiate in 2018, once
again than accept something she views as an unacceptable product. “I have an incentive to get a good bill done. I do not have an incentive to do
a bad bill,” Stabenow told the Washington Examiner. However, there is a distinct possibility that ranking member John Boozman (R-AK) will
soon hold the committee gavel, given the favorable Senate map for Republicans in November. Meanwhile, control of the lower chamber and
White House is viewed as a coin toss. SNAP benefits friction The
dynamics underlying the farm bill are complex and
largely bipartisan. The legislation reflects a careful balancing of interests, from farmers to
environmentalists to food advocates. Food stamps, though, have been a constant source of friction in talks. The bill exploded in
size, to the tune of $256 billion, after the Biden administration raised the grocery cost estimate used to set SNAP benefits, and now Republicans
want to force future changes to be cost neutral. Democrats call that a cut to the program, citing the almost $30 billion reduction estimated by
the Congressional Budget Office, while Republicans note the program, adjusted for inflation each year, would continue to grow. “We're not
talking about taking away anything from anybody. It's just slowing down the growth,” said Boozman. “I think by any measure certainly nutrition
has been well taken care of.” Stabenow predicted
Republicans would have to abandon the changes if they want
to get a farm bill done, citing past fights over SNAP. In debt ceiling negotiations last year, House Republicans won stricter
work requirements but have been unsuccessful at other times. “Never works,” Stabenow said. “They always come back and realize you have to
have the whole farm bill coalition.” Nonetheless, Republicans celebrated committee passage of the House bill on
Thursday night as a sign of momentum. Four Democrats crossed over to vote in favor despite Stabenow and
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) leaning on panel Democrats to oppose it earlier this month. House makes progress The vote
marked a step forward more than a breakthrough. The bill faces a bigger hurdle on the House floor due to pockets of Republican
opposition, while any eventual compromise still needs to pass the Democratic-led Senate. “I don't know where the votes come from, on the
Right or the Left,” Stabenow said. Over in the Senate, Stabenow released a public summary of her committee’s farm bill at the beginning of the
month, proposing, among other things, an expansion in food stamp eligibility. But the baby steps — her committee is waiting for Senate
Republicans’ blueprint to engage in negotiations — mean there is little time on the Senate calendar to get a bill done. Boozman,
who is
aligned with House Agriculture Chairman Glenn Thompson (R-PA), told the Washington Examiner there
is a “good chance” a compromise with the Democrats can still come together. Under one scenario, the two
chambers agree to a short extension to the end of the year and then iron out a deal in the lame-duck session, the time between the November
election and the start of the new Congress. “I don't think it gets any easier next year,” Boozman said. For the time being, the two sides seem as
dug-in as ever. On Wednesday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack accused House Republicans of attempting to “rob Peter to pay Paul” with
their bill. Democrats have criticized Thompson’s decision to restrict SNAP while pursuing a $47 billion increase in price supports for
commodities like peanuts and rice. Boozman called Vilsack’s comments “unprecedented” and unhelpful. “Out of the $1.5 trillion that we're
talking about, we need more farm in the farm bill,” he said. 'Areas of concern' Meanwhile, negotiators are at loggerheads over how to treat
billions in Inflation Reduction Act dollars that Democrats want rolled into the farm bill. Republicans are open to doing so but want the money,
currently slated for climate initiatives, to be available for conservation programs more broadly. Stabenow
said there are wide
areas for agreement on the farm bill. She cited provisions on crop insurance that she said could be attractive to Republicans. But
Stabenow sounded less bullish than Boozman on the chances of a breakthrough. “I don't think we're close on the areas that, unfortunately,
have really been the areas of concern,” Stabenow said. “I'm doing everything I can to try to get people at the table and to be realistic about
what we can do.” Asked about Stabenow’s retirement, Boozman praised her as a “great partner” and said both sides were working through
their disagreements on SNAP in “good faith.” “We've done some really difficult things in the nutrition space,” he said.
The conventional wisdom is that Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) will succeed Stabenow as the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee
in the new Congress.

The plan kills any chance of passage – The process of the plan
is time consuming – last time Congress attempted this is
dragged committee members into weeks of back and forth
debates – that would doom any attempt a trying to pass Farm
Bill
Molteni 6/5/2019
Megan Molteni is a science writer at STAT News. Previously, she was a staff writer at
WIRED,, “Congress Is Debating—Again—Whether Genes Can Be Patented”,
https://www.wired.com/story/congress-is-debating-again-whether-genes-can-be-
patented/ --- ECM
THE Supreme Court unanimously struck down patents on two human genes—BRCA1 and
IN 2013,

BRCA2—associated with breast and ovarian cancers. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court at the time that isolated

DNA “is a product of nature and not patent eligible.” The historic decision invalidated patents held by Myriad Genetics, the
defendant in a 2009 lawsuit brought by dozens of patients and researchers represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, breaking the company’s
virtual monopoly on predictive cancer testing and unleashing a torrent of competition. Today, more than a dozen companies, including mail-order spit-kit
operations like 23andMe and Color, can tell you what your BRCA genes say about your risk of getting cancer.

Nowlawmakers in Washington, DC, are weighing a new proposal that would upend
that landmark decision and other recent rulings that created judicial exceptions
to federal patent law. Under debate are the notions that natural phenomena, observations of
laws of nature, and abstract ideas are unpatentable. That legal precedent includes a major
victory for the software industry against a plague of patent trolls. If successful, some worry this bill could
carve up the world’s genetic resources into commercial fiefdoms, forcing
scientists to perform basic research under constant threat of legal action.
The bipartisan draft bill, released last month by Senators Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) and Chris Coons (D-Delaware), makes changes to several
sections of the statutes covering patent law and adds a provision that would nullify the Supreme Court’s

exceptions to it. Critics of those decisions say they’ve left the US with incoherent and overly stringent patent eligibility rules that are hurting
innovation, at a time when technological rivals, in particular China, are speeding ahead. Proponents of the current legal

doctrine fear reform will send the US back to a time when you could slap intellectual
property rights on almost anything —from a DNA sequence to the act of scanning and sending a file with a single click.
The proposed patent bill now pits the pro-reformers, which include the biomedical and pharmaceutical industries,
against the internet giants of Silicon Valley. That clash is on display in a series
of three public hearings that began this week in the Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property,
which Tillis chairs and of which Coons is ranking member.

The goal, Tillis said in his opening remarks on Tuesday, was to hear concerns from both sides and move toward compromise in the form of a final bill they
could introduce in the Senate later this summer. “If I was a CEO of a company in [the tech and software] industries, I would want to maintain the status
quo because it provides certainty,” said Tillis. “Unfortunately it does so for only a portion of our current innovation economy. I’m concerned about the US
economy as a whole.”

Forty-five witnesses are expected to testify, among them law professors, retired judges, former heads of the US Patent
and Trademark Office, pharmaceutical and medical diagnostic testing executives, and trade associations representing Big Tech, including Amazon,
Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. Joining the bill’s opponents is the ACLU, which is testifying this afternoon. On Monday, the organization sent a letter to
lawmakers signed by 169 scientific societies, research institutes, and patient advocacy groups arguing that the proposed changes would suffocate
potentially life-saving biomedical research and impede patients from accessing affordable diagnostic testing.

But the lawmakers say that their bill doesn’t in fact revive companies’ power to patent human genes or other basic research discoveries. “I want to be
clear on one thing,” Coons said Tuesday. “Our proposal would not change the law to allow a company to patent a gene as it exists in the human body.”

The confusion is understandable though. Even witnesses at Tuesday’s hearings had differing interpretations of the
bill’s language. Charles Duan, a patent policy researcher at the R Street Institute in Washington, DC, said he was encouraged by Coons’ words
but that his assertion is inconsistent with the proposed text. “The result of the legislation as it’s been drafted right now could make it possible to obtain
patents on pure scientific research,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the intent, but I think that’s what the language does.”

Sherry Knowles, an intellectual property attorney in Atlanta, celebrated the proposed bill precisely because she believes it would overturn Supreme Court
decisions like the Myriad case. Since that decision, she said during her testimony Tuesday, “there’s been a dead stop in research in the United States on
isolated natural products.” She cited as an example the drug adriamycin, which was first discovered in bacteria and which helped her survive a bout with
breast cancer. If the Myriad case had happened earlier, she argued, she wouldn’t have had access to the drug.

It states that “no implicit or other judicially created

The differing interpretations spawn from a single provision.

exceptions to subject matter eligibility, including ‘abstract ideas,’ ‘laws of nature,’ or ‘natural phenomena,’ shall be used to
determine patent eligibility under section 101, and all cases establishing or interpreting those exceptions
to eligibility are hereby abrogated.”

As with many legal fights, meaning can turn on the interpretation of a single
word. In this case, that word is abrogation. By most legal dictionary definitions, it means the formal nullification of a law through an act of Congress—
as in, Congress overruling the outcomes of the Supreme Court. Its more common usage, though, basically says that whatever legal approach the courts
used in the past isn’t going to be used anymore, says David O. Taylor, a legal scholar who specializes in patent eligibility at Southern Methodist University.

“They’re not saying, ‘OK, now you can patent natural phenomena,’" Taylor says. "They’re saying it can be hard to figure out what is an abstract idea, what
is a law of nature, what do we mean when we say ‘natural phenomena’?” This bill creates a clarified legal test for how patent evaluators should determine
those things in place of Supreme Court precedence.

The new legal test includes an updated definition of the term “useful.” To be eligible for a patent, a discovery or invention would now have to have an
identifiable benefit made possible only through human intervention. And it would have to be in a “field of technology,” which Taylor believes is meant to
create a safe zone for pure scientific research. He agrees with the senators that these new stipulations should keep human genes and other laws of nature
off-limits to patent-seekers.

Arti Rai, a patent law scholar at Duke University, finds more comfort in the parts of the statute the new bill leaves unchanged, namely the novelty
requirement. If the draft bill passed, she believes it could still allow patents on versions of genes “isolated” by human scientists, the defense Myriad used
in its case. “But the novelty requirement would make patenting individual human genes no longer a possibility,” she wrote in an email to WIRED, because
those genes are no longer new. Two decades of research into how human DNA at the single-gene level codes for traits and diseases has already put most
of that information in the public domain. But the proposed law could affect situations where multiple genes are being assessed for their role in certain
conditions. This would encompass the emerging field of polygenic risk scores. People are already seeking patents for some of the methods for calculating
them, says Rai.

All these conflicts and more are on display today and next Tuesday, when the third hearing takes place.
No one expects to resolve the issues in a week. But, as Coons said in his opening statement, the
point of the hearings is to expose any weaknesses in their solution, to test whether it’s
workable, and determine if such changes are even necessary at all.

The farm bill is key to global food security.

Katherine Miller & Mary Sue Milliken 24. *Founding executive director of the Chef Action Network
and the vice president of impact at the James Beard Foundation. Former food policy fellow at American
University’s Sine Institute of Policy and Politics; a Distinguished Terker Fellow at George Washington
University’s School of Media and Public Affairs. **Mary Sue Milliken is a James Beard and Julia Child
Award-winning chef, serves on the Board of Trustees for the James Beard Foundation, and is a member
of the U. S. State Department’s American Chef Corps, "Congress Must Pass the Vital Farm Bill to Address
Food Security". Food Tank. April 2024. https://foodtank.com/news/2024/05/op-ed-congress-must-pass-
the-vital-farm-bill-to-address-food-security/
While Congress is flailing—moving from one near government shutdown to another—crucial legislation that supports our communities lies in
limbo. That includes the
Farm Bill, a vital legislative package responsible for funding everything from farm subsidies
and SNAP benefits to international food aid, the urgency to assist war-torn countries, combat rising
hunger, and protect our farmlands. We need a strong farmer-focused Farm Bill and we need it now. For Americans,
for our allies and for our planet. Food has a powerful impact on our lives—one that goes beyond our plates. Our global food
system accounts for approximately 10 percent of our global economy and nearly a third of global
greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, more than 1 billion people are employed directly by the food system—from farms and fishing vessels
to meat processors, restaurants, food aid workers to waste haulers – with three times that many people living in households that support the
system. The
Farm Bill is also necessary to sustain over a billion people’s livelihoods and combat
malnutrition in war-torn regions. That is especially true in countries where hunger is escalating and the
dangers faced by aid workers also grow. In solidarity with the chef and restaurant community, we deeply mourn the lives of the seven World
Central Kitchen team members who tragically lost their lives while organizing emergency food aid in Gaza. While potential negotiations are
underway, the decisions made by the 118th Congress will impact farmers and producers at home and
abroad for years to come. They will also determine the fate of women and children who rely on food
assistance programs included in the bill in the United States and worldwide. The bill, which in late 2023
temporarily extended agricultural support, domestic nutrition programs, emergency feeding initiatives, and
international food aid programs through September 2024, includes important provisions for these areas. According to the U.N.
Food and Agriculture Organization, over 700 million people face chronic hunger worldwide, even though enough food is
produced globally to feed everyone. This number grows almost daily because of the global instability caused by
wars and climate-related emergencies. From the wars raging in Ukraine and Gaza to the climate disasters
striking the South Pacific and the American Gulf Coast, one thing is evident: people are going increasingly
hungry. We have the resources but are failing to address the problem. Over the past decade, we’ve worked with chefs, farmers, and
fishermen to find new ways to feed those displaced by disasters and to lobby for increased funding for emergency feeding programs. Whether
it’s the innovative, quick-thinking, community-based organizations that continue to feed thousands daily after the tragic fires in Maui or the
chef-led SWAT teams of World Central Kitchen that materialize during humanitarian crises, the local chefs, restaurant workers, and farmers can
feed people wherever and whenever they are needed most. The same applies to innovative emergency feeding programs
supported by organizations like Oxfam. Across East Africa, Oxfam is working with local organizations and humanitarian networks to
reach more than 1.3 million people and provide not only food, but also flexible and responsive support for hungry communities: programs like
food distribution in Ethiopia’s Somali region, cash assistance for food and livestock feed in Kenya, and
resources like seeds, tools, and greenhouse training in Somalia. Oxfam and its local partners provide food and flexible
and responsive support for hungry communities. But this is not enough, nor is it a sustainable solution. To tackle hunger and ensure that
every child and family knows where their next meal is coming from, we need robust and decisive action and committed
funding from every country – and the U.S. should be leading the way. Congress should fully fund programs that feed
people displaced by conflict and climate change and sustainably tackle hunger through programs that support agriculture development and
humanitarian assistance. The problem may be complicated, but it is solvable. This bill is crucial for labor, unions, and other facets of our society.
Leaders don’t have to wait until September 2024 to pass a new Farm Bill—nor should they. Members
of Congress can and must
answer President Biden’s call to transcend political impasses and come together to do what’s best for
America—this includes our farmers and finding ways to feed those most in need. We urge them to develop a
Farm Bill with meaningful financial support for farmers and the increasing number of people who rely on its safety net programs at home and
abroad. It simply requires a dash of political will mixed with the temerity to do what’s right for the country and the world.
Food insecurity goes nuclear.
Julian Cribb 22. Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, the Australian Academy of Technological
Science (ATSE) and the Australian National University Emeritus Faculty, “How food can end wars, repair
climate and restore the Earth”, https://juliancribb.blog/2022/05/25/how-food-can-end-wars-repair-
climate-and-restore-the-earth/

Humans have fought over food and the means of producing it for 20,000 years, as rock art in Australia
shows. Food, water and land scarcity are primary drivers in two thirds of modern conflicts today. Indeed, many
people seem to have forgotten that the primary German war aim in World War II was to take farmland
from the Soviets and put German farmers on it. It is very likely that controlling the Ukraine’s bountiful and
reliable food bowl is among Putin’s main aims also. In the short run this is imposing hunger and even starvation on hundreds
of millions of people far beyond Europe. Spreading hunger in turn snowballs into government failures, civil wars
and refugee tsunamis around the world – as it did in 2008 when a shortfall in Ukrainian grain exports led to revolutions in three
Arab countries. Already, a third of a billion people – equal to the entire population of Europe – leave their homes each year, either as refugees
or economic migrants, to seek better lives in countries which seem more stable and food secure. War will add to the flood. Thus, in developing
a new food system for the world of the 21st Century, we also have to find a way to curb the human appetite for war. In Food or War, I trace the
links between food and conflict through human history, explore the role of food in recent conflicts and examine nine
regions of the
world which are at high risk of food failure and conflict in the foreseeable future – conflicts ranging from
riots and government failure to nuclear war. My aim is to show that the link between food and war is
inexorable – but that it can be broken. And that having enough good food is the most under-rated, under-
recognised and precious ‘weapon of peace’ in the world today.
 OFF---1NC
HORSE-TRADING DA
Big tech hates stronger IP---they’ll retaliate with lobbying tactics
Barnett 21 (director of University of Southern California’s law school’s Media, Entertainment and Technology Law Program, professor at
USC law, with a focus on innovation policy and strategy in technology markets., “Why Big Tech Likes Weak IP”,
https://www.cato.org/regulation/spring-2021/why-big-tech-likes-weak-ip?fbclid=IwAR0nD2gHEYNiVmzImumMx3sLILLwTa-
1aHGmfao8ilRsQDbR5mr__ySLV5E, CATO, Spring 2021---gm)

https://www.cato.org/regulation/spring-2021/why-big-tech-likes-weak-ip?
fbclid=IwAR0nD2gHEYNiVmzImumMx3sLILLwTa-1aHGmfao8ilRsQDbR5mr__ySLV5E

Specifically, weak‐IP environments are hospitable for large, integrated firms that maintain internal
markets for financing and conducting R&D and then embed the resulting intellectual output in goods
and services for the end‐user market. By contrast, strong‐IP environments enable entry by smaller firms
that specialize in R&D and monetize the resulting intellectual outputs through external relationships
with third parties. This organizational distortion matters because larger firms tend to excel in incremental and process‐related
innovation that refines existing technologies while smaller firms tend to excel in product innovation that challenges existing technologies.
The most striking examples are found in the biotechnology and semiconductor industries, in which patent‐
dependent business models have facilitated significant entry by R&D-specialist firms and a vertical disintegration of the market supply chain.
Counterintuitively, a
strong‐IP environment can lower entry costs by relieving firms from having to assemble
a production and distribution infrastructure in order to earn returns on R&D investments. This may explain
why in 1966 (during the postwar weak‐IP regime) small firms accounted for only about 5% of business R&D spending, but they accounted for
almost 24% in 2006 (during the strong‐IP regime starting in the early 1980s).
Lessons from Political Economy
As an empirical matter, it
is notoriously difficult to establish definitively the extent to which patents are
necessary to support innovation by particular firms or industries. I adopt an alternative approach that assesses the
value that firms themselves place on patents as indicated by firms’ advocacy and lobbying actions. If it is true that patent protection facilitates
entry by smaller and less integrated firms that specialize in R&D, we should expect to observe those firms expressing policy preferences
favoring stronger IP rights. If
it is true that larger and more integrated firms do not rely heavily on patents or
can even derive competitive advantages through non‐IP‐dependent production and distribution
capacities, we should expect to observe that those firms express policy preferences favoring weaker IP
rights.
Lobbying behavior/ To test this hypothesis, I reviewed and gathered evidence on the lobbying behavior of various technology‐intensive
industries. Historical examples show that large, integrated firms resisted strong patent protection in the late 19th‐century railroad industry, as
did large, integrated firms like IBM in the computing industry of the 1960s and 1970s. Both industries have in common the fact that incumbents
offered a bundled package of intangible and tangible assets and therefore resisted patent protection that facilitated entry by suppliers of
discrete components of that package. More recent evidence shows that some of the largest
technology firms were among the
most vigorous supporters of the America Invents Act. Enacted in 2011, that statute substantially expanded
opportunities for third parties to contest the validity of patents, principally through the Patent Trial and
Appeal Board (PTAB). It is likely not accidental that these same firms have been among the most active
petitioners at the PTAB seeking to invalidate issued patents.

Consolidation of Big tech to create monopolies are an existential threat to democracy.

Fukuyama et al. 20 (Francis Fukuayama is a Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies,
Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science, honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai
University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), and the Pardee Rand Graduate School, “How to Save Democracy From Technology”,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-11-24/fukuyama-how-save-democracy-technology?
check_logged_in=1&utm_medium=promo_email&utm_source=lo_flows&utm_campaign=article_link&utm_term=article_email&utm_content=
20240630, Foreign Affairs, 11-24-20---gm)

Now, a growing “post-Chicago school” argues that antitrust law should be enforced more vigorously. Antitrust
enforcement is
necessary, they believe, because unregulated markets cannot stop the rise and entrenchment of
anticompetitive monopolies. The shortcomings of the Chicago school’s approach to antitrust have also led to the “neo-Brandeisian
school” of antitrust. This group of legal scholars argues that the Sherman Act, the country’s early federal antitrust statute, was meant to protect
not just economic values but also political ones, such as free speech and economic equality. Since
digital platforms both wield
economic power and control communication bottlenecks, these companies have become a natural
target for this camp.
Big Tech poses unique threats to a well-functioning democracy.
It is true that digital markets exhibit certain features that distinguish them from conventional ones. For one thing, the coin of the realm is data.
Once a company such as Amazon or Google has amassed data on hundreds of millions of users, it can move
into completely new markets and beat established firms that lack similar knowledge. For another thing, such companies benefit greatly from
so-called network effects. The
larger the network gets, the more useful it becomes to its users, which creates a
positive feedback loop that leads a single company to dominate the market. Unlike traditional firms, companies
in the digital space do not compete for market share; they compete for the market itself. First movers can
entrench themselves and make further competition impossible. They can swallow up potential rivals, as Facebook did by purchasing Instagram
and WhatsApp.

But the jury is still out on the question of whether the massive technology companies reduce consumer welfare. They offer a wealth of digital
products, such as searches, email, and social networking accounts, and consumers seem to value these products highly, even as they pay a price
by giving up their privacy and allowing advertisers to target them. Moreover, almost every abuse these platforms are accused of perpetrating
can be simultaneously defended as economically efficient. Amazon, for instance, has shuttered mom-and-pop retail stores and gutted not just
main streets but also big-box retailers. But the company is at the same time providing a service that many consumers find invaluable. (Imagine
what it would be like if people had to rely on in-person retail during the pandemic.) As for the allegation that the platforms purchase startups to
forestall competition, it is hard to know whether a young company would have become the next Apple or Google had it remained independent,
or if it would have failed without the infusion of capital and management expertise it received from its new owners. Although consumers might
have been better off if Instagram had stayed separate and become a viable alternative to Facebook, they would have been worse off if
Instagram had failed altogether.

The economic case for reining in Big Tech is complicated. But there is a much more convincing political case. Internet
platforms cause political harms that are far more alarming than any economic damage they create. Their
real danger is not that they distort markets; it is that they threaten democracy.

THE INFORMATION MONOPOLISTS

Since 2016, Americans have woken up to the power of technology companies to shape information. These
platforms have allowed hoaxers to peddle fake news and extremists to push conspiracy theories. They
have created “filter bubbles,” an environment in which, because of how their algorithms work, users are exposed only to information that
confirms their preexisting beliefs. And they can amplify or bury particular voices, thus having a disturbing influence on
democratic political debate. The ultimate fear is that the platforms have amassed so much power that
they could sway an election, either deliberately or unwittingly.
Critics have responded to these concerns by demanding that the platforms assume greater responsibility for the content they broadcast. They
called for Twitter to suppress or fact-check President Donald Trump’s misleading tweets. They lambasted Facebook for stating that it would not
moderate political content. Many would like to see Internet platforms behave like media companies, curating their political content and holding
public officials accountable.

But pressuring large platforms to perform that function—and hoping they will do it with the public
interest in mind—is not a long-term solution. This approach sidesteps the problem of their underlying power,
and any real solution must limit that power. Today, it is largely conservatives who complain about Internet platforms’ political
bias. They assume, with some justification, that the people who run today’s platforms—Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook,
Sundar Pichai of Google, and Jack Dorsey of Twitter—tend to be socially progressive, even as they are driven primarily by commercial self-
interest.

Internet platforms’ real danger is not that they distort markets; it is that they threaten democracy.

This assumption may not hold up in the longer run. Suppose that one of these giants were taken over by a conservative billionaire. Rupert
Murdoch’s control over Fox News and The Wall Street Journal already gives him far-reaching political clout, but at least the effects of that
control are plain to see: you
know when you are reading a Wall Street Journal editorial or watching Fox News.
But if Murdoch were to control Facebook or Google, he could subtly alter ranking or search algorithms
to shape what users see and read, potentially affecting their political views without their awareness or
consent. And the platforms’ dominance makes their influence hard to escape. If you are a liberal, you can simply watch MSNBC instead of
Fox; under a Murdoch-controlled Facebook, you may not have a similar choice if you want to share news stories or coordinate political activity
with your friends.

Consider also that the platforms—Amazon,

Facebook, and Google, in particular—possess information about
individuals’ lives that prior monopolists never had. They know who people’s friends and family are, about people’s incomes
and possessions, and many of the most intimate details of their lives. What if the executive of a platform with corrupt intentions were to exploit
embarrassing information to force the hand of a public official? Alternatively, imagine a misuse of private information in conjunction with the
powers of the government—say, Facebook teaming up with a politicized Justice Department.

Digital platforms’ concentrated economic and political power is like a loaded weapon sitting on a table.
At the moment, the people sitting on the other side of the table likely won’t pick up the gun and pull the trigger. The question for U.S.
democracy, however, is whether it is safe to leave the gun there, where another person with worse
intentions could come along and pick it up. No liberal democracy is content to entrust concentrated
political power to individuals based on assumptions about their good intentions. That is why the United States
places checks and balances on that power.

Democratic erosion spurs world war----stability ensures global peace

Diamond 19, Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies senior fellow
(Larry, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency,
Ch 14)

The lengthening shadow of authoritarianism would also reach out from Beijing. An increasingly assertive and nationalist
China would demand and compel submission to its growing strategic ambitions—not just in southeast Asia and the S outh C hina S ea but in the
Indian Ocean , all the way to the Mid dle East at one end and deep into the Pacific Ocean at the other. As China continued its march to technological
supremacy and global leadership, a declining, demoralized, and discredited United States would have to decide whether to go to war to defend democratic Taiwan
from being forcibly absorbed into China’s Communist dictatorship. Surging Chinese despotism would threaten the freedom of much of the rest of democratic Asia,
even if Japan, South Korea, and other U.S. allies—at best exposed, at worst forsaken—were able to resist Beijing's growing efforts to penetrate and compromise
their democratic political systems. It would be a hinge in history. How would democracy in Latin America fare in the face of this massive shift in global power and
momentum, with the corrupting influence of Chinese money eroding democratic forces in party politics, the media, and government? How would the brave
dissidents and demonstrators who cherish the values of self-government and human rights argue for the moral force of democracy as an idea with China on the
march and America in retreat? How many wreak and tentative democracies would survive in Africa as its elites saw ever more clearly which way the winds of global
power were blowing? How many multinational companies would conclude that their interests compelled them to ride the dictators' bandwagon? How many global
broadcasters and social media companies would resist the autocrats' demands for censorship and complicity? In such a near future, my fellow experts would no
longer talk of “democratic erosion.” We would be spiraling downward into a time of democratic despair, recalling Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s grim observation from
the 1970s that liberal democracy “is where the world was, not where it is going.”5 The world pulled out of that downward spiral—but it took new, more purposeful
American leadership. The planet was not so lucky in the 1930s, when the global implosion of democracy led to a catastrophic
world war, between a rising axis of emboldened dictatorships and a shaken and economically depressed collection of self-doubting
democracies. These are the stakes. Expanding democracy—with its liberal norms and constitutional
commitments — is a crucial foundation for world peace and security. Knock that away, and our most basic hopes and assumptions
will be imperiled. The problem is not just that the ground is slipping. It is that we are perched on a global precipice. That ledge has been gradually

giving way for a decade. If the erosion continues, we may well reach a tipping point where democracy goes bankrupt
suddenly—plunging the world into depths of oppression and aggression that we have not seen since the end of
World War II. As a political scientist, I know that our theories and tools are not nearly good enough to tell us just how close we are getting to that point—
until it happens.