{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/releases?ContentRecord_id=049c6ed8-b5fe-41c1-90b2-1d35b3377693", "MEDIUM: Will the New Congress Pass a Tech Agenda? Orrin Hatch Says Yes.", "2014-11-25", "2014", "2014-11", "Republican", "House", "UT", "Orrin Hatch", "H000338", "www.hatch.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Washington, D.C.\u2014 Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Chairman of the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force and former chairman and current member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, spoke to Steven Levy, editor in chief of Backchannel, the tech hub at Medium. Senator Hatch discussed his tech and innovation priorities for the 114th\u00a0Congress, including taking on patent trolls, protecting Americans\u2019\u00a0privacy through the LEADS Act, and high-skilled immigration reform.\u00a0\r\nThe article can be found\u00a0here.\u00a0\r\nA few select quotes are below: \u00a0\r\nOn Patent Trolls:\r\nYou take the patent troll legislation\u2014we had that done. But the Democrats threw the high-tech community under the bus because the trial lawyers raised such a fuss with them. [The lawyers] hated my provision, because if they put my provision in on that particular bill, they couldn\u2019t get away with what they wanted to get away with.\r\nTo have an effective bill you have to include mandatory fee-shifting [meaning that if a patent troll loses a case, it must pay legal fees], heightened discovery standards, and a mechanism to enable recovery of fees against shell companies. It won\u2019t work without having all of those provisions in.\r\nIt\u2019s inexcusable to have these patent trolls that bring this litigation against small companies, let alone big companies, and they do it with shell corporations\u2014if they lose, they never have to pay anything, anyway. It costs up to two million bucks to defend one of these things. There is so much momentum behind this bill. Obama claims that he wants it and he wants a win in this. I think we can give it to him but it\u2019s going to be hard.\r\nOn Protecting Data Privacy through the LEADS Act:\u00a0\r\nI want to give credit to Chris Coons and Dean Heller who are with me on this. The LEADS Act begins a discussion on the complex and important issue surrounding data privacy in the digital age. The confidentiality of business data and electronic communications and their protection from arbitrary government seizure are really of the upmost importance. In order for our U.S. companies to achieve their full potential, for our nation to maintain its position at the pinnacle of innovation and competitiveness, our data business records and other electronic information just have to be protected from arbitrary government intrusion. I mean we just have to. The LEADS Act is a must-pass bill next congress. It would promote trust in U.S. IT technologies worldwide and it would enable law enforcement to fulfill its public safety mission. I don\u2019t see how anybody could be against it.\r\nOn High-Skilled Immigration:\r\nThe President\u2019s executive order cannot provide a permanent solution to our country\u2019s inadequate and outdated employment-based immigration laws. But I\u2019m going to work really hard on getting a good immigration bill that covers the whole area. We should start with areas of widespread agreement?\u2014?like high-skilled immigration. The I-Squared Act, which is a bipartisan immigration innovation act, addresses most if not all of the tech industry\u2019s immigration needs. We need to increase the H1-B visas. Currently the cap is 85,000 a year. This year alone we had 172,500 submissions. That means American companies were unable to hire nearly 90,000 high-skilled workers that we\u2019ve educated.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/releases?ContentRecord_id=049c6ed8-b5fe-41c1-90b2-1d35b3377693"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.1920730359852314, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}