According to a recently discovered patent application, Mastercard plans to develop software optimized for bitcoin and blockchain transactions. The second-largest payment-processing corporation also aims to facilitate crypto-based transactions by reducing connections between virtual asset service providers. Crypto News reports: The trademark application is a fascinating window into Mastercard's plans for the future of digital currency. Details have been revealed about creating a downloadable application programming interface (API) designed to verify transactions inside blockchain networks and ease the handling or trading of cryptocurrency. By standardizing this API software, communication between VASPs may be streamlined and crypto transactions easier. Mastercard wants to set up a platform for financial institutions to exchange customer information to verify compliance. This new step is significant for Mastercard's fast-growing presence in the cryptocurrency sector. The corporation announced its intention to offer a limited number of cryptocurrencies on its network in February 2021.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: So, this is bad. Over the last few years, we've written plenty about the so-called "inter partes review" or "IPR" that came into being about a decade ago as part of the "America Invents Act," which was the first major change to the patent system in decades. For much of the first decade of the 2000s, patent trolls were running wild and creating a massive tax on innovation. There were so many stories of people (mostly lawyers) getting vague and broad patents that they never had any intention of commercializing, then waiting for someone to come along and build something actually useful and innovative... and then shaking them down with the threat of patent litigation. The IPR process, while not perfect, was at least an important tool in pushing back on some of the worst of the worst patents. In its most basic form, the IPR process allows nearly anyone to challenge a bad patent and have the special Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) review the patent to determine if it should have been granted in the first place. Given that a bad patent can completely stifle innovation for decades this seems like the very least that the Patent Office should offer to try to get rid of innovation-killing bad patents.

However, patent trolls absolutely loathe the IPR process for fairly obvious reasons. It kills their terrible patents. The entire IPR process has been challenged over and over again and (thankfully) the Supreme Court said that it's perfectly fine for the Patent Office to review granted patents to see if they made a mistake. But, of course, that never stops the patent trolls. They've complained to Congress. And, now, it seems that the Patent Office itself is trying to help them out. Recently, the USPTO announced a possible change to the IPR process that would basically lead to limiting who can actually challenge bad patents, and which patents could be challenged.

The wording of the proposed changes seems to be written in a manner to be as confusing as possible. But there are a few different elements to the proposal. One part would limit who can bring challenges to patents under the IPR system, utilizing the power of the director to do a "discretionary denial." For example, it would say that "certain for-profit entities" are not allowed to bring challenges. Why? That's not clear. [...] But the more worrisome change is this one: "Recognizing the important role the USPTO plays in encouraging and protecting innovation by individual inventors, startups, and under-resourced innovators who are working to bring their ideas to market, the Office is considering limiting the impact of AIA post-grant proceedings on such entities by denying institution when certain conditions are met." Basically, if a patent holder is designated as an "individual inventor, startup" or "under-resourced innovator" then their patents are protected from the IPR process. But, as anyone studying this space well knows, patent trolls often present themselves as all three of those things (even though it's quite frequently not at all true). [...] And, again, none of this should matter. A bad patent is a bad patent. Why should the USPTO create different rules that protect bad patents? If the patent is legit, it will survive the IPR process. The Electronic Frontier Foundation issued a response to the proposed changes: "The U.S. Patent Office has proposed new rules about who can challenge wrongly granted patents. If the rules become official, they will offer new protections to patent trolls. Challenging patents will become far more onerous, and impossible for some. The new rules could stop organizations like EFF, which used this process to fight the Personal Audio 'podcasting patent,' from filing patent challenges altogether."

The digital rights group added: "If these rules were in force, it's not clear that EFF would have been able to protect the podcasting community by fighting, and ultimately winning, a patent challenge against Personal Audio LLC. Personal Audio claimed to be an inventor-owned company that was ready to charge patent royalties against podcasters large and small. EFF crowd-funded a patent challenge and took out the Personal Audio patent after a 5-year legal battle (that included a full IPR process and multiple appeals)."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: During the pandemic, the demand for smart TVs dwindled as the supply chain for critical TV components became unreliable and consumers began tightening up on frivolous spending. Amid this smart TV demand slump, one of the world's top TV chipmakers, Taiwan-based Realtek, was hit with multiple meritless lawsuits by an alleged patent troll, Future Link Systems. These actions, Realtek said, drained its resources, made Realtek appear unreliable as a TV-chip supplier, and created "the harmful illusion of supply chain uncertainties in an already constrained industry." Determined to defend its reputation and maintain its dominant place in the market, Realtek filed a lawsuit (PDF) this week in a US district court in California. In it, the TV chipmaker alleged that Future Link launched "an unprecedented and unseemly conspiracy" with the world's leading TV-chip supplier, Taiwan-based MediaTek, and was allegedly paid a "bounty" to file frivolous patent infringement claims intended to drive Realtek out of the TV-chip market.

The scheme allegedly worked like this: Future Link "intentionally and knowingly" asked a US district court in Texas and the US International Trade Commission "for injunctions prohibiting importation of Realtek TV Chips and devices containing the same into the United States," Realtek alleged. This allowed MediaTek to reap the benefits of diminished competition in that market, Realtek claimed. Today, Reuters reported that MediaTek has officially responded to Realtek's allegations, vowing to defend itself against the lawsuit and claiming that MediaTek will supply evidence to dispute Realtek's claims.

Realtek's lawsuit seeks a jury trial to fight back against MediaTek and Future Link, as well as IPValue Management, which the complaint said owns and operates Future Link. The TV chipmaker alleged that defendants violated unfair competition laws in California, as well as federal laws. Any damages won from the lawsuit will be donated to charity, Realtek said. Realtek's complaint likens MediaTek to "robber barons of the Industrial Age," allegedly seeking to destroy competition and secure a monopoly in the TV-chip market. "With this action, Realtek seeks to stop a modern robber baron and its hired henchmen, protect itself from ongoing injury, and guard against the destruction of competition in the critical semiconductor industry by holding defendants accountable for their conspiracy," the complaint said.

Google has been ordered to pay Sonos $32.5 million after a jury verdict found that Google's smart speakers and media players infringed on one of Sonos' patents. The Verge reports: The legal battle started in 2020 when Sonos accused Google of copying its patented multiroom audio technology after the companies partnered in 2013. Sonos went on to win its case at the US International Trade Commission, resulting in a limited import ban on some of the Google devices in question. Google has also had to pull some features from its lineup of smart speakers and smart displays.

Last August, Google sued Sonos over allegations that the audio company infringed on Google's smart speakers and voice control technology. This most recent trial started earlier this month, with Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda telling Reuters at the time that the case pertains to "some very specific features that are not commonly used" and that Sonos "mischaracterized our partnership and technology." Neither Google nor Sonos immediately responded to The Verge's request for comment.

Sonos didn't come out of the case completely victorious, however, as the jury decided that Google's Home app didn't infringe on a separate patent filed by Sonos. The judge also told jurors to "disregard a $90 million damages estimate from a Sonos expert witness, saying he had decided that some of the evidence provided was inadmissible," Law360 reports.

AI technology should not be considered an "inventor" by U.S. patent law, Google argues in a new filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. From a report: USPTO is currently soliciting comments on AI technologies and inventorship -- asking people, among other things, how AI is being used in creating inventions and whether its contributions would qualify it for treatment as a joint inventor. Questions posed by USPTO include: "If an AI system contributes to an invention at the same level as a human who would be considered a joint inventor, is the invention patentable under current patent laws? Are there situations in which AI-generated contributions are not owned by any entity and therefore part of the public domain?"

Sonos and Alphabet's Google will face off in a San Francisco federal trial on Monday over claims that Google copied Sonos' patented smart-speaker technology in wireless audio devices like Google Home and Chromecast Audio. From a report: The case is part of a sprawling intellectual property dispute between the former business partners that includes other lawsuits in the U.S., Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands. Sonos has asked the court for $90 million in damages from Google in the San Francisco case, down from $3 billion after U.S. District Judge William Alsup narrowed the case, according to a Google court filing. Sonos alleges Google infringed two of its patents related to multi-room wireless audio. Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said the case relates to "some very specific features that are not commonly used," and that Sonos "mischaracterized our partnership and technology."

Intellectual property laws cannot handle possibility artificial intelligence could invent things on its own. From a report: When members of the US supreme court refused this week to hear a groundbreaking case that sought to have an artificial intelligence system named as the inventor on a patent, it appeared to lay to rest a controversial idea that could have transformed the intellectual property field. The justices' decision, in the case of Thaler vs Vidal, leaves in place two lower court rulings that only "natural persons" can be awarded patents. The decision dealt a blow to claims that intelligent machines are already matching human creativity in important areas of the economy and deserve similar protections for their ideas. But while the court's decision blocked a potentially radical extension of patent rights, it has done nothing to calm growing worries that AI is threatening to upend other aspects of intellectual property law.

The US Patent and Trademark Office opened hearings on the issue this week, drawing warnings that AI-fuelled inventions might stretch existing understandings of how the patent system works and lead to a barrage of litigation. The flurry of concern has been prompted by the rapid rise of generative AI. Though known mainly from OpenAI's ChatGPT, the same technology is already being used to design semiconductors and suggest ideas for new molecules that might form the basis of useful drugs. For now, such uses of AI do not appear to pose a serious challenge to the patent system since the technology is being used as a tool to help humans shape ideas rather than operating independently, said Chris Morgan, an IP partner at law firm Reed Smith. However, referring to the possibility that AI systems might one day come up with inventions on their own, she added: "Our laws are not equipped, the way they're written right now, to handle that scenario."

The European Commission proposed rules on Thursday to govern patents increasingly in demand for technologies used in smart devices such as drones, connected cars and mobile phones, to try to reduce litigation. From a report: The Commission said the system for what are known as standard-essential patents (SEPs), was fragmented, lacked transparency, led to lengthy disputes and that self-regulation had not worked. SEPs protect technology such as for 5G, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth that is needed by equipment producers to comply with international standards.

NASA has developed a new superalloy called GRX-810 that could lead to stronger, more durable parts for airplanes and spacecraft. SciTechDaily reports: GRX-810 is an oxide dispersion strengthened alloy. In other words, tiny particles containing oxygen atoms spread throughout the alloy enhance its strength. Such alloys are excellent candidates to build aerospace parts for high-temperature applications, like those inside aircraft and rocket engines, because they can withstand harsher conditions before reaching their breaking points. Current state-of-the-art 3D printed superalloys can withstand temperatures up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Compared to those, GRX-810 is twice as strong, over 1,000 times more durable, and twice as resistant to oxidation.

"This new alloy is a major achievement," said Dale Hopkins, deputy project manager of NASA's Transformational Tools and Technologies project. "In the very near future, it may well be one of the most successful technology patents NASA Glenn has ever produced." GRX-810 was developed under NASA's Transformational Tools and Technologies project, with support from the agency's Game Changing Development Program. The peer-reviewed paper has been published in the journal Nature.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge by computer scientist Stephen Thaler to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's refusal to issue patents for inventions his AI system created. From a report: The justices turned away Thaler's appeal of a lower court's ruling that patents can be issued only to human inventors and that his AI system could not be considered the legal creator of two inventions that he has said it generated. Thaler founded Imagination Engines Inc, an advanced artificial neural network technology company based in Saint Charles, Missouri. According to Thaler, his DABUS system, short for Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience, created unique prototypes for a beverage holder and emergency light beacon entirely on its own.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and a federal judge in Virginia rejected his patent applications for the inventions on the grounds that DABUS is not a person. The patent-focused U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld those decisions last year and said U.S. patent law unambiguously requires inventors to be human beings. Thaler told the Supreme Court that AI is being used to innovate in fields ranging from medicine to energy, and that rejecting AI-generated patents "curtails our patent system's ability - and thwarts Congress's intent - to optimally stimulate innovation and technological progress."

Aspiring partners accuse Apple of copying their ideas. From a report: It sounded like a dream partnership when Apple reached out to Joe Kiani, the founder of a company that makes blood-oxygen measurement devices. He figured his technology was a perfect fit for the Apple Watch. Soon after meeting him, Apple began hiring employees from his company, Masimo, including engineers and its chief medical officer. Apple offered to double their salaries, Mr. Kiani said. In 2019, Apple published patents under the name of a former Masimo engineer for sensors similar to Masimo's, documents show. The following year, Apple launched a watch that could measure blood oxygen levels. "When Apple takes an interest in a company, it's the kiss of death," said Mr. Kiani. "First, you get all excited. Then you realize that the long-term plan is to do it themselves and take it all." Mr. Kiani is one of more than two dozen executives, inventors, investors and lawyers who described similar encounters with Apple. First, they said, came discussions about potential partnerships or integration of their technology into Apple products. Then, they said, talks stopped and Apple launched its own similar features.

Apple said that it doesn't steal technology and that it respects the intellectual property of other companies. It said Masimo and other companies cited in this article are copying Apple, and that it would fight the claims in court. Apple has tried to invalidate hundreds of patents owned by companies that have accused Apple of violating their patents. According to lawyers and executives at some smaller companies, Apple sometimes files multiple petitions on a single patent claim and attempts to invalidate patents unrelated to the initial dispute. Many large companies, particularly in tech, have been known to scoop up employees and technology from smaller potential rivals. Software developers have given a name to what they describe as Apple's behavior in such cases: sherlocking. The term refers to an episode about two decades ago, when Apple released a software product called "Sherlock" that helped users find files on its Mac computers and perform internet searches.

Alphabet's Google on Tuesday convinced a U.S. appeals court to cancel three anti-malware patents at the heart of a Texas jury's $20 million infringement verdict against the company. Reuters reports: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said (PDF) that Alfonso Cioffi and Allen Rozman's patents were invalid because they contained inventions that were not included in an earlier version of the patent. Cioffi and the late Rozman's daughters sued Google in East Texas federal court in 2013, alleging anti-malware functions in Google's Chrome web browser infringed their patents for technology that prevents malware from accessing critical files on a computer.

A jury decided in 2017 that Google infringed the patents and awarded the plaintiffs $20 million plus ongoing royalties, which their attorney said at the time were expected to total about $7 million per year for the next nine years. But the Federal Circuit said Tuesday that all of the patents were invalid. The three patents were reissued from an earlier anti-malware patent, and federal law required the new patents to cover the same invention as the first, the unanimous three-judge panel concluded. The appeals court said the new patents outlined technology specific to web browsers that the first patent did not mention.

Alphabet's Google received a mixed ruling on Thursday from a San Francisco federal judge in a patent lawsuit brought by Sonos over wireless audio technology, failing to invalidate all of the patents before a trial but narrowing Sonos' claims. Reuters reports: The case, set for trial May 8, is part of a contentious intellectual property dispute between the former business partners over their smart speakers that includes lawsuits in the United States, Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands. Sonos won a limited import ban on some Google devices from the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) last year, while Google has sued Sonos for patent infringement at the ITC and in California. [...]

Sonos accused Google in the San Francisco case of infringing four patents related to multi-room wireless speaker technology. U.S. District Judge William Alsup previously invalidated one of the patents and determined Google infringed another. Alsup found Thursday that a second Sonos patent was also invalid, but rejected Google's request to cancel the remaining two patents before trial. The judge also said Google did not infringe one of the surviving patents willfully, reducing Sonos' potential damages. Alsup also said he would hold a separate bench trial after the jury trial to determine whether Google's redesigned speakers infringe Sonos' patents.

Dish Network must pay $469 million for infringing two patents held by parental-control technology maker ClearPlay related to filtering material from streaming video, a jury in U.S. federal court in Utah has decided. From a report: The jury in Salt Lake City reached its decision on Friday in ClearPlay's lawsuit against Dish, finding that Dish's AutoHop feature for skipping commercials on its Hopper set-top boxes is covered by ClearPlay's patents. While jurors found that Dish's technology violated ClearPlay's patent rights, they rejected ClearPlay's contention that Dish copied its technology intentionally. A Dish spokesperson said on Monday that the company was disappointed in the jury's decision and will contest the verdict, potentially through an appeal. Representatives for ClearPlay did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.

China has a "stunning lead" in 37 out of 44 critical and emerging technologies as Western democracies lose a global competition for research output, a security think tank said on Thursday after tracking defence, space, energy and biotechnology. From a report: The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said its study showed that, in some fields, all of the world's top 10 research institutions are based in China. The study, funded by the United States State Department, found the United States was often second-ranked, although it led global research in high-performance computing, quantum computing, small satellites and vaccines. "Western democracies are losing the global technological competition, including the race for scientific and research breakthroughs," the report said, urging greater research investment by governments.

China had established a "stunning lead in high-impact research" under government programs. The report called for democratic nations to collaborate more often to create secure supply chains and "rapidly pursue a strategic critical technology step-up." ASPI tracked the most-cited scientific papers, which it said are the most likely to result in patents. China's surprise breakthrough in hypersonic missiles in 2021 would have been identified earlier if China's strong research had been detected, it said. "Over the past five years, China generated 48.49% of the world's high-impact research papers into advanced aircraft engines, including hypersonics, and it hosts seven of the world's top 10 research institutions," it said.

In the land of patent litigation, all patent trolls want to file in the US Western District of Texas Court. This court is infamous for being sympathetic to patent plaintiffs. That's why patent litigator WSOU Investments, aka Brazos Licensing and Development, went after Dell, EMC, and VMware in this Court. Usually, this would have been the smart move. Not this time. District Judge Alan Albright granted the defendants a directed verdict, and that was the end of the matter. From a report: What happened was this: WSOU, although successful before with their carpet bombing patent lawsuit strategy, failed this time. According to the lead defense counsel and Gibson Dunn partner, Brian A. Rosenthal, "This case got to trial because the plaintiff refused to come to their senses before trial. We obtained a number of serious exclusions of evidence prior to trial, and told them very early on the case had no merit." The judge agreed.

That came as a surprise to those of us who watch patent lawsuits, so you don't have to. As Heather Meeker, the well-known open-source and intellectual property (IP) lawyer, said, "This is surprisingly defendant-friendly from Judge Albright, who has received a lot of criticism for making Waco such a patent plaintiff-friendly docket." Until now, WSOU had been very successful. As a Patent Assertion Entity (PAEs), its only goal is to profit by acquiring patents and then suing companies that might be using the patents' intellectual property (IP) assets. It does this by using its portfolio of technology patents to file numerous individual suits involving different patents against companies. WSOU's main tactic, as Unified Patents put it, "forces operating companies to either settle or fight, on average, eight lawsuits at once."

Most companies faced with the financial burden of struggling with so many lawsuits settle rather than fight. Not this time. For the first time, companies decided to take the issues to court. In this particular set of cases, WSOU claimed in a June 2020 lawsuit that the defendants had infringed on three cloud infrastructure networking patents, and sought $435 million in damages. Rosenthal argued that the patents in question were old and irrelevant to the defendants' interests. The defense team had informed WSOU in October 2020 that there was no proof of direct infringement, but the plaintiff persisted with the case, leading to exclusions of evidence prior to trial. So it was that on the first day of the trial, two of the patents were tossed out on evidentiary rulings, and the plaintiff rested its case on the third day. The defense then requested a directed verdict, which was granted by Albright, resulting in a win for the defendants. In short, even this patent-friendly court could find no evidence at all for WSOU's assertions.

OpenAI is today unrecognizable, with multi-billion-dollar deals and corporate partnerships. From a report: OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research organization by Altman, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, among other tech leaders. In its founding statement, the company declared its commitment to research "to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return." The blog stated that "since our research is free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a positive human impact," and that all researchers would be encouraged to share "papers, blog posts, or code, and our patents (if any) will be shared with the world."

Now, eight years later, we are faced with a company that is neither transparent nor driven by positive human impact, but instead, as many critics including co-founder Musk have argued, is powered by speed and profit. And this company is unleashing technology that, while flawed, is still poised to increase some elements of workplace automation at the expense of human employees. Google, for example, has highlighted the efficiency gains from AI that autocompletes code, as it lays off thousands of workers. When OpenAI first began, it was envisioned as doing basic AI research in an open way, with undetermined ends. Co-founder Greg Bockman told The New Yorker, "Our goal right now...is to do the best thing there is to do. It's a little vague." This resulted in a shift in direction in 2018 when the company looked to capital resources for some direction. "Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity. We anticipate needing to marshal substantial resources to fulfill our mission," the company wrote in an updated charter in 2018. By March 2019, OpenAI shed its non-profit status and set up a "capped profit" sector, in which the company could now receive investments and would provide investors with profit capped at 100 times their investment.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Drive: Ford applied for a patent to make the repossession process go smoother. For the bank, that is. The patent document was submitted to the United States Patent Office in August 2021 but it was formally published Feb. 23. It's titled "Systems and Methods to Repossess a Vehicle." It describes several ways to make the life of somebody who has missed several car payments harder.

It explicitly says the system, which could be installed on any future vehicle in the automaker's lineup with a data connection would be capable of "[disabling] a functionality of one or more components of the vehicle." Everything from the engine to the air conditioning. For vehicles with autonomous or semi-autonomous driving capability, the system could "move the vehicle from a first spot to a second spot that is more convenient for a tow truck to tow the vehicle... move the vehicle from the premises of the owner to a location such as, for example, the premises of the repossession agency," or, if the lending institution considers the "financial viability of executing a repossession procedure" to be unjustifiable, the vehicle could drive itself to the junkyard.

No other automakers have recently attempted to patent a similar system, and indeed the Ford patent doesn't reference any other legal document for the sake of clarifying its idea. All of this being said, patent documents, especially applications like this one, do not necessarily represent an automaker's intent to introduce the described feature, process, or technology to its vehicles. Ford might just be attempting to protect this idea for the sake of doing so. The document does go into a lot of detail as to how such a system might work, though.

Medical device maker AliveCor announced today that President Biden has upheld an International Trade Commission ruling that could result in a potential import ban on the Apple Watch over its EKG feature. The Verge reports: Back in December, the ITC issued a final determination (PDF) that Apple had infringed on AliveCor's wearable EKG tech. In the ruling, the ITC recommended a limited exclusion order and a cease-and-desist order for Apple Watch models with EKG features. If enforced, that would mean that Apple would no longer be able to import Apple Watch with EKG capabilities into the US for sale. According to Apple spokesperson Hannah Smith, the company will appeal the ITC's decision to the Federal Circuit.

A veto from Biden would have rendered the issue moot. According to The Hill, while presidents generally don't interfere with ITC rulings, in 2013, former President Obama vetoed a similar import ban after the ITC ruled that iPhones and iPads infringed on Samsung tech. It's possible that Apple was hoping for history to repeat itself, as it reportedly amped up lobbying last week ahead of Biden's decision.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/11/23550036/the-apple-watchs-blood-oxygen-feature-is-at-the-center-of-a-potential-import-ban Biden's decision doesn't mean every Apple Watch from the Series 4 to the Apple Watch Ultra (excluding both generations of the SE) is about to disappear off shelves. Apple's Smith told The Verge the ITC's ruling doesn't have any real impact at the moment. That's because the Patent Trial and Appeal Board recently ruled that AliveCor's EKG tech isn't actually patentable, and AliveCor would have to win its appeal (PDF) to that ruling for any potential ban to take effect. However, AliveCor isn't the only medical tech company that's seeking an import ban on the Apple Watch via the ITC. Masimo also sued Apple for allegedly infringing on five of its pulse oximetry patents. Last month, an ITC judge also ruled in Masimo's favor and will decide whether a potential import ban is warranted in May. If so, that import ban would impact any Apple Watch with an SpO2 sensor (i.e., the Series 6 or later, excluding the SE.)

Key members of China's most influential scientific body have outlined the country's plan to circumvent US chip sanctions for the first time, codifying Beijing's view of how it could win a crucial technological conflict with Washington. From a report: Two of the country's senior academics wrote that Beijing should amass a portfolio of patents that govern the next generation of chipmaking, from novel materials to new techniques. That should propel its semiconductor ambitions while giving China the clout to push back against US sanctions designed to hamstring its semiconductor sector, Luo Junwei and Li Shushen wrote in the bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The article, published to a social media account affiliated with the academy, offers a rare glimpse into how Beijing thinks about and might react to the Biden administration's escalating hostilities over semiconductors. The academy advises China's top decision makers and the article echoes remarks by President Xi Jinping calling for victory in developing core technologies. It comes as the country's new technology overseer outlined his vision for moving past American sanctions, stressing the need to modernize and rectify weak links in its supply chain. China has a plan to develop next-generation chip materials that it put in place in 2020 as a reaction to Trump-era restrictions. Yet that national strategy has yet to yield a technological edge on the world's leading chipmakers. Washington has implemented a series of measures limiting exports of technology such as chipmaking gear and artificial intelligence processors to China, part of a broader set of technology sanctions.