releases: https://www.hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/releases?ContentRecord_id=049c6ed8-b5fe-41c1-90b2-1d35b3377693
Data license: MIT · Data source: dwillis/congress-press
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| 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 | legacy | Washington, D.C.— 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 Congress, including taking on patent trolls, protecting Americans’ privacy through the LEADS Act, and high-skilled immigration reform. The article can be found here. A few select quotes are below: On Patent Trolls: You take the patent troll legislation—we 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’t get away with what they wanted to get away with. To 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’t work without having all of those provisions in. It’s inexcusable to have these patent trolls that bring this litigation against small companies, let alone big companies, and they do it with shell corporations—if 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’s going to be hard. On Protecting Data Privacy through the LEADS Act: I 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’t see how anybody could be against it. On High-Skilled Immigration: The President’s executive order cannot provide a permanent solution to our country’s inadequate and outdated employment-based immigration laws. But I’m going to work really hard on getting a good immigration bill that covers the whole area. We should start with areas of widespread agreement?—?like high-skilled immigration. The I-Squared Act, which is a bipartisan immigration innovation act, addresses most if not all of the tech industry’s 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’ve educated. | 1 | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z |