The Unsung Heroes of Digital Trade: Small Businesses’ Vital Role
In the vast landscape of digital trade, global corporations and tech giants often dominate the headlines. It's easy to overlook the significant and indispensable role played by small businesses. These small enterprises are the unsung heroes of the digital economy, and their contribution cannot be overstated. As we navigate the ever-evolving terrain of digital trade, it is crucial to recognize and celebrate the immense value that small businesses bring to the table. Small businesses are the lifeblood of any [...]
Webinar Debut – Encryption and Equity: A Global Call for Consumer Protection
With the risk of privacy breaches increasing daily, researchers continue to find that the dangers of such compromises disproportionately burden disenfranchised communities. In order to protect the most at-risk populations, lawmakers around the globe must tackle consumer protection issues one by one, especially the widespread efforts directed at privacy, content moderation, and online safety. During this discussion, we’re diving into how developers are harnessing existing digital protections, like encryption, to build secure products and how various pieces of legislation in [...]
Call to Action: Defend US Small Businesses’ Ability to Compete in the Global Digital Economy
For as long as the United States has had a digital economy, the nation’s trade negotiators – across different administrations – have worked to combat foreign policies that would impede American small business innovators’ ability to compete and succeed abroad. However, in an unprecedented move, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) decided to withdraw U.S. support from our own digital trade priorities at the World Trade Organization (WTO). USTR’s decision weakens the ability of U.S. small [...]
SMEs urge MEPs to support the new SEP Regulation
An Open Letter to the Members of the European Parliament As the European Parliament deliberates on the proposed EU Regulation on Standard-Essential Patents (SEPs), our members urge lawmakers to endorse this vital regulation. The SEP licensing regime in Europe is fundamentally broken, placing far too much power in the hands of large SEP holders, and harming the ability of European businesses to develop exciting new internet of things (IoT) technologies. Recent court cases, academic studies, and small and medium-sized enterprise [...]
AI Will Always Need You: ACT | The App Association’s Global AI Principles
Artificial Intelligence (AI) isn’t just a buzzword, it’s a serious topic for tech innovators and policymakers around the world. As the app economy embraces this complex and evolving technology, lawmakers and regulators in various regions are clamoring to be among the first to issue rules and guidelines related to AI. But before these new rules go any further, the voice of our small business members must be considered. We’ve made a few changes and updates to our AI principles since [...]
Event Recap: Future of SEP Regulation
Both patents and technical standards are essential for modern innovation. Patents represent a nation’s dedication to incentivizing hard work and creativity to create new solutions. Standard-essential patents (SEPs) are a unique category of patents that enable standardized invention, giving SEP holders great power, and great responsibility. Unfortunately, SEP holders have been taking advantage of their heightened market power and the lack of transparency in SEP licencing negotiations to the detriment of innovators using technical standards, such as those related to [...]