Think tank leader underscores how automakers’ growing design patent abuse is reducing competition and raising prices in the car repair market, necessitating federal action
Fairfax, Va.—In a new Townhall column, George Landrith, president and CEO of think tank Frontiers of Freedom, underscores how automakers’ growing design patent abuse is reducing competition and raising prices in the car repair market, necessitating federal action on bipartisan solutions such as the Save Money on Auto Repair Transportation (SMART) Act.
Landrith highlights that, though patent law was originally a “firm foundation for innovation,” design patents’ “dramatic expansion … well beyond where they were originally intended” has extinguished healthy competition for “ordinary things like fenders and taillights.” As a result, consumers are suffering:
“The morphing and changing of the actual meaning of a design patent has allowed automobile design patents to mean that even parts like: headlights, taillights, fenders, bumpers, etc. are covered by the patent. This means that consumers and businesses cannot buy alternative or competing parts. That means repairs cost more, can take longer, and consumers have fewer choices.”
— George Landrith, President and CEO, Frontiers of Freedom
Landrith calls the bipartisan SMART Act a “win-win” solution that will increase consumer choice and “reduce costs” for car repairs and auto insurance, while preserving “appropriate incentives to innovate.”
Alongside the Right to Equitable and Professional Auto Industry Repair (REPAIR) Act, the SMART Act will provide much-needed relief for consumers and local repair businesses.
Read Landrith’s full piece here.
Tell Congress to pass the SMART and REPAIR Acts today.
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