US Lawmakers Seek Patent Data From Commerce Department Amid Science Pact Talks With China

U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) speaks during hearings on President Donald Trump's first budget on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 28, 2017. (Zach Gibson/Getty Images)

A group of Republican lawmakers has requested that the Commerce Department disclose government-funded research that led to Chinese patents, aiming to highlight the risks they perceive in renewing a bilateral science and technology agreement.

Six House members, led by Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), said they want to use the data to assess the “national security damage” caused by a landmark science and technology pact that the United States signed with China decades ago, according to a June 13 press release.

The U.S.-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement (STA) was signed in January 1979, shortly after the United States established a diplomatic relationship with the Chinese communist regime. The deal was subjected to renewal every five years, with the most recent renewal taking place in 2018.

With growing concerns over the regime’s intellectual property theft and practice of leveraging civilian research for military purposes, some U.S. lawmakers have called on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to let the bilateral cooperation deal lapse last summer.

However, after the Biden administration granted two six-month extensions to “amend and strengthen” the terms, the STA is now due to expire in August.

“We believe the U.S.-PRC STA is a vector to give the PRC access to U.S. dual-use research and presents a clear national security risk,” the lawmakers wrote in a June 13 letter to Under Secretary of Commerce Kathi Vidal, using the acronym of China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.

They requested Ms. Vidal, who heads the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, tell Congress how many patents involving U.S. government-funded research and Chinese inventors have been filed at her office every year since 2010.

The lawmakers requested a breakdown of these patents, with an emphasis on identifying the Chinese companies that have recruited any of these Chinese inventors. Furthermore, they inquired whether these Chinese inventors and their employers are affiliated with the CCP’s military or any entities subject to U.S. export controls.

“Congress and the American people deserve a full understanding of the extent to which a renewal of a U.S.-PRC Science and Technology Agreement is threatening our intellectual property and national security,” the letter reads.

The Epoch Times has contacted the Commerce Department for comment but hadn’t received a response by press time.

The letter was signed by Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.), Andy Barr (R-Ky.), Michelle Steel (R-Calif.), and Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.). The lawmakers are sitting members of the House Select Committee on the CCP.

In June 2023, when the U.S. government was due to renew the bilateral science cooperation pact with the Beijing regime, the committee raised concerns in a letter to Mr. Blinken about the CCP’s potential efforts to leverage STA to advance its military.

Lawmakers cited a 2018 bilateral project under the STA studying “instrumented balloons,” which they said the CCP may have used “similar balloon technology to surveil U.S. military sites on U.S. territory.”

A U.S. Air Force pilot looked down at the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon as it hovered over the Central Continental United States on Feb. 3, 2023. Recovery efforts began shortly after the balloon was downed. (Courtesy of the Department of Defense via Getty Images)

The CCP “uses academic researchers, industrial espionage, forced technology transfers, and other tactics to gain an edge in critical technologies, which in turn fuels the People’s Liberation Army modernization,” the 10 Republican lawmakers on the House panel wrote.

“The evidence available suggests that the PRC will continue to look for opportunities to exploit partnerships organized under the STA to advance its military objectives to the greatest extent possible and, in some cases, to attempt to undermine American sovereignty,” the letter reads.

“The United States must stop fueling its own destruction,” it adds. “Letting the STA expire is a good first step.”

The CCP supported renewing the science pact with the United States. The Chinese Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng said last August that the deal’s extension could “inject more positive energy” into relations between the two countries.

U.S. agencies have warned about CCP-backed industrial espionage, forced technology transfers, and other tactics that could fuel the regime’s military modernization. Many analysts say the agreement must be reworked to safeguard U.S. innovation amid heightened strategic competition.

Last December, U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said the bilateral compact needs to be modernized as previous iterations did not account for emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, machine learning, and quantum mathematics.

While Mr. Burns emphasized the importance of the deal, calling it the bedrock of the cooperation between the research institutions in two countries, the prospect of a new one is still uncertain.

“We put down our expectations that it had to be modernized, that it’s not a given that we’re going to agree,” Mr. Burns told the audience during a Brookings Institution event in Washington. “I think that both sides agree on that.”

Reuters contributed to this report.