CFJ Weighs In on How to Restore America’s Scientific and Innovation Leadership
- Jeffrey Depp
- Dec 29, 2025
- 2 min read
OSTP RFI Docket ID: OSTP-TECH-2025-0100
The Committee for Justice recently submitted comprehensive comments to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in response to its Request for Information on Accelerating the American Scientific Enterprise. At stake is nothing less than whether the United States will restore—or continue to erode—the institutional foundations that made it the world’s leading innovation economy.
For decades, American scientific leadership rested on a simple but powerful framework: targeted public investment in basic research paired with strong intellectual property rights, decentralized markets, entrepreneurial risk-taking, and competition driven by entry and innovation. That framework produced transformative breakthroughs in medicine, computing, energy, and manufacturing—breakthroughs that improved lives, expanded choice, and lowered prices over time through innovation-driven competition.
CFJ’s submission explains that many of today’s challenges in science and technology are not the result of too little federal involvement, but of policies that weaken incentives to invest in turning discoveries into real-world products. Unstable patent rights, administrative overreach, price controls and reference pricing schemes, activist antitrust enforcement, and “access” or “reasonable price” mandates imposed at early stages of research all make it harder to attract the private capital needed to commercialize scientific breakthroughs. When investment declines, fewer new products reach the market, competition weakens, and consumers ultimately pay the price.
Our comments emphasize several core themes. First, strong and predictable intellectual property rights are essential—not as privileges granted by the government, but as property rights secured by it. Second, prices must be discovered through markets, not set by administrative decree; price controls sever the link between price and cost and undermine the sustainability of innovation. Third, small and medium-sized businesses are the engines of scientific commercialization and must not be squeezed out by policies that favor incumbents or penalize success. Fourth, genuinely high-risk, high-reward research requires incentives commensurate with uncertainty, including serious consideration of enhanced patent protection. And finally, in an era of strategic competition, research security must protect the technological frontier without smothering scientific vitality.
CFJ’s message to OSTP is clear: the United States did not become the world’s innovation leader through centralized planning or regulatory micromanagement. It succeeded by securing property rights, respecting market discovery, and allowing entrepreneurs to take risks. Reaffirming those principles is essential to accelerating scientific progress, strengthening competition, and ensuring that the benefits of innovation reach all Americans.
We appreciate OSTP’s willingness to solicit public input on these critical issues and look forward to continuing the conversation about how best to secure America’s scientific and technological future.
