[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 96 (Tuesday, June 13, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H5780]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


         RESTORE AMERICAN PATENT RIGHTS TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

  (Mr. ROHRABACHER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, unbeknownst to most Americans and many 
of my colleagues, a provision was snuck into last year's GATT 
implementing legislation that dramatically reduces the certain patent 
protection enjoyed by Americans, American investors and American 
inventors for over 100 years. It was a rip-off of the control and 
benefit of technology that was created by our own people and by the 
technology that was created by the investors who helped finance that 
technology.
  I have a bill, H.R. 359, with 168 cosponsors, to restore America's 
patent rights before the damage is done. Well, while my bill is being 
held hostage and prisoner by the subcommittee, and no one has been able 
to hold a hearing on my bill with 168 cosponsors, adding insult to 
injury, another bill has been heard, and what does this bill do?
  This new piece of patent legislation, and get this, Mr. and Mrs. 
America, said, ``If our inventors file for a patent, 18 months after 
they file, whether they are issued or not, the patent, the patent is 
published, meaning the whole world is going to get to see what our 
inventors and investors have come up with even before the patent is 
issued.'' It is a come in here and steal our technology bill.
  That piece of legislation has to stop. Restore American patent rights 
to the American people.

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