Connect CEO Duane Roth made hiring a full-time lobbyist in Washington D.C. a key part of last summer’s initiative to boost San Diego’s innovation economy. Last week, the nonprofit group named Timothy Tardibono, a lawyer and policy analyst, as its government affairs director and chief counsel—and Tardibono says he’s already got some issues on his radar.
“I’ve been here for four or five days, and there’s already two bills that could really hurt San Diego’s innovation community,” says Tardibono, who served most recently as legal counsel to Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Tardibono, who is a full-time employee of Connect, spoke to me by phone from his new office in Washington.
Tardibono says one issue stems from a provision of the financial reform act introduced by Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd. The provision raises the requirements for a wealthy individual to qualify as an “accredited investor,” which would make it harder to make angel investments in startups. A pending amendment will fix that provision, enabling innovative startups to still raise needed capital from angel investors. But Tardibono says, “It’s a great example of why Connect needs eyes on the ground here in Washington.”
The other issue is a broader and more complex effort to reform both patent law and to overhaul the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. “Patent reform only comes to the Hill every two or three decades,” Tardibono says. While the debate has been cast as “a clash of the titans—with big high-tech versus big pharma,” Tardibono says the legislation also is stirring a variety of concerns among small investors about the ability of large technology companies to race to the patent office to claim patent protections.
Tardibono intends to discuss the technology community’s need for immigration reform, saying, “There is a great need to retain engineers and scientists from other countries to help startups develop technologies and big companies to develop new products.” He also wants to win more federal grants and other types of funding for technology startups.
Tardibono says his prime directive, though, is to voice the concerns of entrepreneurs and technology innovators because the process of technology innovation “is really not well-understood here on Capitol Hill,” a sentiment echoed in San Diego by Connect’s Roth.
“First of all, we call him an advocate, not a lobbyist,” Roth says. “Our constituency is broad and his mission really is education. His job is to
