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The Association for Competitive Technology’s (ACT) policy agenda is driven by our members and focused on advancing clear, scalable regulatory frameworks that enable small technology companies to innovate and grow. ACT engages with policymakers on a wide range of issues critical to the future of technology and innovation while also advocating on core small business priorities. Dig deeper into ACT’s current issue areas below.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a key element of innovation and competitiveness in the app economy. While many small developers have used AI and machine learning for years to look for bugs and to manipulate data, today the implementation models of AI are changing almost daily. Startups and small tech companies are at the forefront of this new AI revolution. As the regulatory landscape evolves, it is crucial to strike a balance between fostering innovation and protecting consumers and businesses from demonstrated harms. Policies must be crafted in a way that supports the diverse needs of the app economy, particularly the startups and small tech companies that rely on AI to compete and thrive in a dynamic market.

Connected Health

Technology has the power to improve patient engagement and health outcomes, but antiquated rules hold back innovation and adoption. From coverage and payment to interoperability and information blocking to privacy and security the stakes are high. In order to ensure that patients, provides, and the healthcare ecosystem as a whole can make beneficial use of digital health and AI tools rules must be updated to encourage innovation and adoption while addressing identifiable risks.

Funding and Taxes

Small teams need cross-border market access and predictable routes to funding and liquidity. Uncertainty around data flows, localisation, and merger review increases risk, tightens capital, and makes it harder for startups to scale and reinvest. For startups, scaleups, and small businesses, tax policy is not an abstraction. It is the difference between surviving a few bad quarters or shutting down, between hiring a fifth engineer or plateauting at four, and between scaling into a federal contract or staying stuck in bootstrap mode. Innovation first tax policy can make the difference between nurturing a vibrant local startup ecosystem, and forcing entrepreneurs to seek more fertile shores.

Intellectual Property

Technical standards power interoperability across artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT) ecosystems. Startups and small tech companies utilize these standards to compete and innovation across consumer and enterprise markets. But the abuse of patents within standards makes pricing, planning, and access to capital harder if not impossible. The requirement for fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing of standard-essential patents (SEP) to any willing licensee must be upheld. Startups and small tech companies drive innovation across the globe, but the obstruction and exploitation by a handful of SEP holding bad actors is stifling innovation.

  • European Union Must Counteract SME-hostile IP Practices With Its Own Rulebook

    It is vital that the EU counteract SME-hostile IP practices. In our latest submission to the DG Trade Targeted Consultation on the State of IP in Third Countries, the Association for Competitive Technology flags critical barriers impacting tech SMEs. ▪️ China: Security rules are pushing European tech companies to hand over their source code just to access the market. Foreign companies are also locked out of shaping the standards they are later required to follow. ▪️ Brazil: Patent lawsuits have exploded (from six cases in 2024 to 31 in 2025), with courts fast-tracking injunctions that can freeze a smaller company’s product out of the market before the underlying dispute is even resolved. ▪️ India: Significant uncertainty remains regarding the relationship between patent and competition law in SEP disputes under Indian law. Further, the country has still not implemented its obligations under the WIPO Copyright Treaty. We are asking the EU to push back on these practices and to finally put its own rulebook in place so it has credibility to do so.

  • ACT Urges Congress to Reclaim Oversight of USPTO’s PTAB Authority as Its Fee-Setting Authority Nears Expiration

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Morgan Reed, president of the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT), delivered testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet,…

  • Morgan Reed Testifies Before House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet

    I. Introduction We applaud the Subcommittee for holding this hearing on renewing the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (the Office’s or USPTO’s) statutory fee-setting authority. The Patent Act authorizes…

Online Marketplaces & Competition

Curated Online Marketplaces (COMs), such as app stores, help small teams reach users. But policies like the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) which mandate broad access requirements can weaken security, raise fraud risk, and create disruptive implementation churn that hits small developers first. Startups and small tech companies leverage COMs, including app stores, cloud platforms, and e-commerce hubs, to reach customers efficiently. Startups and small companies rely on the economics of trust – the long-term accretion of consumer confidence won by well-managed marketplaces – to sell products and services to customers that otherwise would be suspicious of young companies.

  • AICOA is DMA in Translation

    Think AICOA won’t result in degraded products and services? Think again. Graham Dufault compares language and legal implications of provisions in AICOA to provisions in DMA and breaks down what we can learn from the European Unions' experiment. Where AICOA departs from the DMA, it departs by going further. In both cases, degradation is not a risk that careful implementation might avoid; it is the mechanism. Consumers are absorbing the higher costs directly. And small business developers are absorbing them twice — once as users of the digital platforms, and again as the firms least able to overcome a consumer’s rational new hesitance to install software from a name they don’t recognize. U.S. small tech businesses and our digital economy can't afford to make the same mistakes.

  • State of the Digital Markets Act: The SME Perspective

    After two years of enforcement, there is no evidence that the DMA has delivered measurable benefits to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Instead, EU enforcement has consistently advanced the interests of a handful of large third-parties at the expense of the broader app developer ecosystem.

  • Second Thoughts: Key Jurisdictions Smarten Up on DMA

      For more than a decade, experts have described a “Brussels Effect,” in which jurisdictions worldwide follow the European Union’s (EU) lead on government intervention. In recent years in tech…

Privacy and Online Security

Protecting children from privacy violations and harmful content online is the goal, but approaches that normalise identity collection or weaken end-to-end encryption increase surveillance and breach exposure. Startups and small tech companies handle millions of terabytes of data per day, putting them on the front lines of protecting and enabling responsible use of data. Robust security provisions, data protection, and privacy are in the interest of consumers and small tech companies alike. When regulatory or legislative proposals undermine security and trust, consumers and small businesses ultimately pay the price.

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