[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 76 (Wednesday, May 29, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5639-H5644]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       WHAT MAKES AMERICA GREAT?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] is recognized for 60 
minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to begin my talk 
here with a question of why do we think that America is a great 
country. I would like people who are listening and the people who are 
perhaps reading this in the Congressional Record to ask themselves why 
they think that America is such a great country.
  Is it because we have a powerful military? No, that could not be the 
answer, could it, because there are a lot of great countries? There are 
a lot of countries in the world that have strong militaries, powerful 
militaries. Yet, they are not great countries. They are not countries 
that we would wish to identify with.
  Is it because we have a lot of big companies, a lot of industrial 
companies in the United States? No. They have a lot of big firms and 
big companies in other parts of the world that are pretty despicable 
parts of the world. In fact, there are big companies at different 
places in the world that no American would want to live?
  Perhaps it is because we have a beautiful flag, and we have the red, 
white, and blue, that is sitting behind the podium there. A beautiful 
flag does not make a great country, nor does a big military or a 
powerful military make a great country.
  Certainly one of the factors that make a society a great country is 
the fact that people have a certain degree of freedom, and that was one 
of the guiding principles that led to the formation of the United 
States 200 years ago, when our Founding Fathers struggled for liberty 
and for independence.
  But America is not just a free country. America is a prosperous 
country as well, but it is not just a prosperous country for a few 
people. It has a prosperity that has impacted on the lives of the 
common man and woman. Yes, in this country we have freedom. Everyone, 
every individual, has the right to vote, to speak, to pray; basically, 
to control his or her own destiny. These things are important to what 
is great about America.
  Even our poor people, however, which is another factor, live a decent 
life. In America, a working person, an average working person, if he or 
she is willing to work and to try and to live an honest life, they can 
live a decent life economically. This, too, is part of the American 
dream, because what we have in America, what essentially makes America 
great, is our freedom and the opportunity of our people, the 
opportunity to live in a certain degree of prosperity. And our people 
have, indeed, lived more abundant lives than anyone else in the history 
of the world. Here, wealth is abundant enough so that the average 
person lives a good life.
  Home ownership in this country is more widespread than in almost any 
society in the world. People own their own cars. Some of these things 
are considered miraculous in other parts of the world, where only a 
chosen elite, a very few people, get to participate in this, the 
blessings of America. In this country, our people select their own job, 
even. That is not the case in many other countries.

                                  2145

  In our country, what we see is even the most arduous physical labor 
is assisted by machines, and this is part of the history of our 
country. Many people say, well, the reason America has done so well is 
because our people work so hard and they have always been hardworking 
people. Well, that is not really true. There are hardworking people all 
over the world. Yet very few societies have prospered and have enjoyed 
the freedom that we have here in the United States.
  No, what we have done in the United States is ensure that our working 
people are assisted by machines and that the work that they do is 
multiplied, the product of their labor is multiplied by technology. 
Basically ours is a history of technology being brought to play to help 
save the backbreaking pain of our working people.
  I recently came across a story of one of the early patents in the 
United States. It is not really all that early of a patent. It was 
issued March 20 of 1883. It was a patent that was issued to Jan 
Matzeliger and two investors who had invested in his project.
  What was his project? What was his patent all about? It was a machine 
that revolutionized the manufacturing of shoes. Most people just take 
shoes for granted, but before this machine was invented, many people of 
the United States never wore shoes. In fact, the price of shoes was out 
of reach. Most people owned shoes, maybe one pair of shoes for their 
entire life.
  But within a few years of Mr. Matzeliger's invention being brought to 
play, the price of shoes in our country dropped by 50 percent. Ordinary 
people were able to afford shoes for their feet. We just take this for 
granted today.
  We also take for granted machines like Eli Whitney's reaper or the 
electric light bulb, or how about Robert Fulton's steam engine? By the 
way, Robert Fulton never invented the steam engine. If you look back at 
Robert Fulton, not only did he not invent the steam engine, he also was 
not the first one to ever put a steam engine onto a ship.
   Robert Fulton put a steam engine on a ship and they called him a 
great inventor. Well, the fact is that the Germans had put a steam 
engine on a ship long before, but it had never been brought to play in 
their economy because special interest groups in the German economy 
refused to permit that steam engine on that ship from being used 
because it would displace people from work.
  In the United States we saw it as a means of ending the terrible 
labor, the painful labor of pushing ships with sticks through the 
water. Our society welcomed technology and the German society did not.
  In fact, even the Germans were not the first ones to invent the steam 
engine. The steam engine was invented by the Greeks in ancient times. 
Maybe you will remember seeing a picture of a steam engine, an early 
steam engine which revolved like this over a fire. That was invented by 
the Greeks, but in the Greek marketplace, relieving the pressure of 
work and the burden of work on so many people like the steam engine 
would have done was not something that was thought to be a worthy goal.
  So the steam engines were passed up by the Greeks and by the German 
boatmen. But it was Robert Fulton that revolutionized the world and 
created steamboats which changed the world.
  Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, so many of our Founding Fathers were 
technologists because they believed in freedom and technology, they 
believed that technology would change the world just as democracy would 
change the world. In fact, creating a patent office was written into 
our Constitution. Can you imagine that? Over 200 years ago, our 
Founding Fathers wrote that there would be an office to patent new 
technologies and that was mandated in the basic law of the land, the 
Constitution.

[[Page H5640]]

  That is because our Founding Fathers saw ours as a society that would 
be unlike any other society ever in the history of mankind. They saw 
that America would be a land of liberty, where the rights of all would 
be protected, and they believed that prosperity would follow because it 
would be not just the prosperity of the few but the prosperity of the 
many.
  Well, how could that be possible? If they thought they were going to 
create a free society, how could they think that a free society and a 
free people could ever compete with slave labor? In fact, we had slave 
labor in a large portion of our country, so how could freedom work?
  Well, how freedom could work and compete, and how we could convince 
ourselves to get rid of the evil of slavery in the United States, was 
that free people can compete with slave labor. Free people can compete 
with repressed citizens of other parts of the world, as in China today, 
if the free people have the technology they need to do the job. The 
technology was the key to freedom and prosperity. They saw that.
  Interestingly enough, Mr. Matzeliger, whom I just mentioned, Jan 
Matzeliger, was a black American, and he invented a machine, as I said, 
that changed the life of all Americans. He invented a machine that made 
it possible for Americans to have decent lives because they were able 
to afford shoes.
  And at a time when the rights of other black Americans and all black 
Americans were actually being tread upon, were being attacked, his 
right as an American to own his patent was not abridged. His patent 
rights were protected, even though he was a black American and many of 
the rights of black Americans of those days were not being recognized 
and not being protected. That is how strongly the United States felt 
about technology and about our rights to own the technology that we 
develop, because it is so important for new technologies to be 
developed and for that incentive to be into the system.
  It was America's ingenuity as our Founding Fathers foresaw and as we 
can see ourselves in retrospect, it was America's ingenuity that has 
proven our most valuable asset.
  Well, in the middle of the last century, Americans were given a 
guaranteed patent term of 17 years. That patent by that great black 
American who invented this machine that provided shoes for all of us, 
once his patent was issued, he received a guarantee, he and his 
investors, that that patent would be recognized for 17 years and he 
would be able to benefit from it. Mr. Matzeliger had lived a life of 
deprivation before he invented that machine, and he lived a decent life 
after that in Philadelphia. He lived a life not of luxury, not of 
opulence but a decent life and he was a gentleman and recognized so by 
his community and he left a sizable estate to the church when he died, 
because he had been able to receive the benefits of his invention and 
this was thought to be so important for all Americans. This was a 
right. It was a right, a guaranteed right of 17 years to benefit from 
anything that you invented. It was a right just like any other economic 
right or just like any other political right or social right. This 17-
year guaranteed patent term served us well for over a century. 
Americans, in fact, have had traditionally the strongest patent 
protection of any nation of the world. That is why we prospered. That 
is why the American people have lived well when huge numbers of people 
in other countries have been living in poverty and living lives of 
desperation.

  If we did not have a strong patent system, if we were not the ones 
developing the shoe machines, our people also would have lived in 
poverty, would have lived in repression. I am here tonight to warn the 
American people that the technology laws that have been so vital to our 
Nation's prosperity and to our standard of living, to the standard of 
living of all of our people, is being fundamentally changed, it is 
being changed in a way that they are not aware of and will have 
repercussions on their standard of living and it is happening as we 
speak. Patent rights enjoyed by Americans for over a century are being 
eliminated. The idea of a guaranteed patent term which has been the 
right of Americans is being eliminated. Americans will find that rights 
that they have taken for granted, prosperity that they have taken for 
granted, is changing, that something is being diminished and they just 
cannot figure out what it is that is happening to their country. Were 
we not always the leader in technology? What has happened? In the years 
ahead, Americans will never know what the change was because it is 
happening today very quietly. And it will have serious and sorrowful 
consequences upon the people, future generations of Americans and 
perhaps on this generation of young Americans.
  It started only a short time ago, right after Mr. Clinton was 
elected, he sent the head of our patent office, Bruce Lehman, to Japan. 
There Mr. Lehman signed an agreement, to, quote, harmonize our patent 
laws with those of Japan. Here you have an unelected official who 
agreed to change our laws in a way which dramatically diminished our 
rights, rights that had been Americans for over 100 years, a guaranteed 
patent term, a right to guaranteed patent term of 17 years.
  By the way, the Japanese did not have that, of course. That is why we 
had to change this patent term. We had to eliminate this guaranteed 
patent term that Americans had, because that is not what the Japanese 
system is like. The Japanese system is different. So the Agreement that 
Mr. Lehman signed was an agreement to harmonize our patent laws and 
instead of bringing their system up to our standard of protection for 
the individual, Mr. Lehman agreed to bring down the protection enjoyed 
by Americans to the much lower level of the Japanese.
  If you might remember, the Japanese are not well known for their many 
inventions. I remember reading about Admiral Perry landing in Japan. 
Admiral Perry landed in Japan and brought a little train with him. Do 
you remember that? He brought a little piece of American technology of 
the day and the Japanese proceeded to copy it, because the Japanese are 
known to copy but they are not know to invent. Where we have something 
like 100 Nobel laureates for scientific achievements, they have 5. That 
is because in Japan, the system they have established, their patent 
system, their system of dealing with ingenuity and new ideas was a 
system that was set up for the, quote, collective good, which, of 
course, means the big guys who run the system are running it for 
themselves and they run roughshod over the common people of Japan. That 
is what we have done. We have harmonized our system to be like that. Is 
that not wonderful? Does that not make everybody think that is it not a 
great thing now that we going to have a system like Japan's? Forget it.
  If we had harmonized our political rights with another country and 
brought the level of legal protection of our rights down, there would 
have been a revolt. What would have happened, for example, if we signed 
an agreement with Singapore saying, well, let us harmonize our laws 
here and what we are going to do is we will become more like Singapore 
and that means that we will have certain restrictions on freedom of 
religion and the press and rights to speak and that will make us like 
Singapore.

  Americans would never accept that. They would say, ``That's too 
important. You can't diminish our rights that way.''
  However, what is happening right now very quietly is the diminishing 
of basically intellectual property rights, the guaranteed patent term, 
which will have a much more dramatic impact on the life of the American 
people than what I just described as a harmonization with Singapore. 
And what will happen is we will turn around and we will never know what 
hit us.
  This change is more insidious than anything I have ever seen during 
my 8 years in the House and during my 7 years before that in the White 
House, and during my 10 years before that in and out of journalism.
  The first blow of this underhanded maneuver to quote, harmonize our 
laws, that protect the patent rights of our people so they will be like 
Japan came 2 years ago when a seemingly innocuous change about patent 
term was snuck into the GATT implementation legislation. I say snuck, 
because there was nothing in GATT that required us to change the length 
of our patent

[[Page H5641]]

term the way it was presented. What they did is put something into the 
GATT implementation legislation that was not required by GATT.
  Many American people do not understand and say, ``Well, what does 
that have to do with anything?'' What it has to do with it is the 
Members of this Congress voted for a thing called fast track.

                                  2200

  I voted for fast track. I voted for fast track because I believed 
that setting up a world trading system was important and that if part 
of what that would do is that would say that when the President came 
back to us with an agreement, with his international trading agreement, 
we would then just vote on that agreement and it would be all or 
nothing. We could not amend it. Thus it is called fast track. We could 
not amend and would have to vote up or down on the bill. But part of 
the agreement that we thought we had by giving the President fast track 
was that nothing would be put in the GATT implementation legislation on 
that vote that was not absolutely required by GATT.
  So in order to achieve this change in the patent law here, which was 
not required by GATT, they snuck it into the implementation legislation 
so that in order for us to defeat it, this body would have to vote 
against the entire world trading system. Well, does that sound like a 
Democratic maneuver? This was the most underhanded maneuver that I had 
ever seen, especially for a change that will have long-term 
implications for the well-being of our country.
  The change, as I say, seemed innocent enough. In fact, the change in 
the GATT implementation legislation sounded like it was expanding the 
length of our patent term. Traditionally, as I have said, when someone 
applies for a patent, no matter how long it takes them to get that 
patent, it will be 17 years of protection that they have to recoup 
their investment and to profit from their invention after the patent is 
issued. So after that patent is issued, they will have 17 years.
  That is what we have had for over a century. That is the incentive 
people have had to invest in new technologies. That is what incentive 
people have had, like this black gentleman who invented the shoemaking 
machine, who lived years in deprivation in order to invent the machine, 
because he knew he would benefit for 17 years of ownership after that 
machine was put on to the market and he was issued his patent.
  Well, they changed that. They changed. They eliminated that 
guaranteed patent term, and, in exchange, what do we have? We were 
given a patent term that is 20 years from filing. Now, does that sound 
like they are extending your patent term? Well, no; in fact, what is 
happening is that the 20-year-from-filing term means that once you have 
filed for your patent, 20 years later, no matter how long it takes you 
to be issued your patent, you have no patent rights left.
  So that means if it takes 10 to 15 years, as many breakthrough 
technologies have taken, a long time to get their patent issued, 
because sometimes in these modern technologies they are hard to 
understand; 20 years from filing means that if it takes them 15 years 
to get their patent issued, they have only got 5 years left of 
protection. Five years left of protection.
  That means that every inventor, then, like in Japan, is totally 
vulnerable to the bureaucracy and totally vulnerable to big interest 
groups that might try to interfere with the process; might try to stop 
the patent from being issued in one way or another.
  No, what we did in the GATT implementation legislation to the patent 
term was the most dramatic attack on patent rights, on fundamental 
right of Americans that I have seen in my lifetime. But because no one 
could understand it, it just slipped right on by. And as I say, I 
supported the fast track, and I never felt more betrayed than when I 
realized what had been put into that GATT implementation legislation 
when it was not even required by those negotiations.
  Well, when I began to complain about it, I was promised by the House 
leadership, by the Republican leadership of the House, that there would 
be a chance to correct this problem and that we would have a chance to 
vote on restoring the guaranteed patent term. That was the promise made 
to me. So I put together a piece of legislation, H.R. 359, that 
restores the guaranteed patent term, the right of a guaranteed patent 
term of 17 years to the American people. It has 202 cosponsors. That 
piece of legislation was bottled up in a subcommittee for almost a year 
and a half; not permitted to move to the floor for a vote. And it took 
a lot of hell raising on the part of a certain Member of Congress to 
make sure that system started to move, because during that year and a 
half an expensive public relations campaign was launched.
  Huge multinational corporations and foreign corporations, as well as 
giant American corporations, have moved into Washington, DC, and 
started an attack on H.R. 359. This bill, they say, is not in their 
interest. And many Members of this body have been, actually they have 
been contacted by huge companies saying, well, Congressman Rohrabacher 
does not know what he is talking about; this will be in our benefit.
  Well, what appears to have happened is that corporate America, giant 
corporate America, that has ties with multinational corporations and 
loyalties all over the world, and as we know those loyalties often do 
not extend to their own American people, they would sell out the jobs 
of American people in an instant in order to get a 10 percent higher 
profit margin by investing in a dictatorship like China, well these 
giant corporate American interests signed off on the idea of 
diminishing American patent rights. In exchange for what? In exchange 
for a promise that there would be an international system now which 
will recognize somewhat and somewhat enforce America's ownership of 
certain technologies and of patents. Sort of a recognition of patents.
  Well, what is happening now would be very equivalent of when Japan 
began signing agreements 20 years ago to open their markets to the 
United States; that if instead of waiting to see if Japan would 
actually open their markets, instead of just signing pieces of paper, 
that we went right ahead and gave economic concessions to the Japanese 
that changed America's ability to compete with Japan. It is absolute 
nonsense.
  And corporate America is not, is not, I repeat not, the best group in 
this country to decide what the rights, economic rights of our people 
should be. Not to say they do not do a good job, and oftentimes they 
are, yes, profitmaking companies of world scope, but, quite often they 
have absolutely no commitment to the freedom and ideals that our 
forefathers talked about. They are looking at the bottom line. In this 
particular case their bottom line is very, very shortsighted, and 
really, in the end, has diminished the rights of the American people in 
a way that will dramatically hurt our prosperity.

  Well, the second shoe during this year and a half when my bill was 
bottled up, the second shoe has fallen. A bill has been introduced, 
H.R. 3460, which finishes the harmonization, completes the 
harmonization that we, that our government, that this unelected 
official, Mr. Layman, has agreed to do, the harmonization of our patent 
laws.
  What does H.R. 3460 do? This bill is so transparent I do not 
understand how any Member of Congress could vote for it. I call it the 
Steal American Technologies Act. And I hope that Members of Congress 
are contacted by their constituents about this bill, 3460, the Steal 
American Technologies Act, because when they hear what this bill does, 
common sense will tell them what is going on; that we are in the 
process of seeing one of the greatest acts of thievery from the United 
States of America in the history of our country.
  This patent bill, this supposed patent bill, H.R. 3460, says this: 
that if our inventors apply for a patent, 18 months later, whether or 
not the patent has been issued to the applicant, all of the details of 
that patent application, every blueprint, every last piece of 
information, will be published for the world to see. Now, do you 
understand what I am saying? This law is an open invitation to the 
thieves of the world to steal American technology from American 
inventors even before our inventors have been issued their patent.
  This is the same mentality at the patent office, which recently led 
our

[[Page H5642]]

patent office to give its entire database to the Red Chinese. And what 
was the excuse when we were asked, well, why did you do that? They 
said, well, then they will know what technology not to steal.
  This is beyond imagination, but it should be understandable to the 
common sense of the American people. I would hope that they know that 
in this Democratic process they can talk to their Congressmen, who will 
be voting on 3460 and voting on my bill as a substitute, H.R. 359, 
because common sense tells you that before you issue a patent to 
someone you do not disclose all of his secrets.
  Ironically, when this bill was going through the subcommittee, I was 
sitting in my office with a manufacturer of solar technology. And I 
asked him, and this is at the same moment that the subcommittee was 
passing H.R. 3460 out, I said what will happen if this bill actually 
goes into law and when you file for a patent after 18 months, whether 
you have been issued the patent or not, that it gets published for the 
whole world? And his face reddened and his fist balled up and he said, 
Congressman, if that happens, that means that my technology, that we 
have spent so much time to develop and our investors here in the United 
States have invested in, that means my competitors overseas, the 
Chinese and the Japanese, or anybody else, will be in production of my 
technology, making a profit from it, before I am issued my patent and 
before I can go into production. Which means, if I try to fight them 
later, they will be using the profits from my technology to defeat me 
and probably put me out of business.
  Talk about an outrage. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure 
out what is going on here. American technology is being put in 
jeopardy. For what? To harmonize our laws with Japan. And in Japan, of 
course, when a young inventor invents something, or a poor inventor or 
a small businessman invents something, in Japan over these years, the 
big companies have run roughshod over those average people and stolen 
their wealth and stolen their technology, and they know not to raise 
their head up and to protest.
  By the way, there are other parts of this H.R. 3460, the Steal 
American Technologies Act. Know what the other parts are? They are not 
only going to attacks the rights of American citizens to a guaranteed 
patent term, they are not only going to take an inventor's rights away 
from him to have his invention secret until he is issued a patent, but 
they are going to change the system, the government system itself.
  They are going to take the patent office and they are going to, what 
they call corporatize it. Now, I am a conservative Republican. I am all 
in favor of privatization. Now, you would think, oh, here is an idea 
where you take something done by the government and take it over to the 
private sector. Well, I was Ronald Reagan's speech writer. I talked 
about privatization all the time. You would think I would be in favor 
of it.

                                  2215

  Well, it is just like the foolishness of changing the patent term to 
20 years. That did not help us either. What it was was 20 years that 
ends up with 5 or 6 years of protection for breakthrough technologies.
  No, this type of corporatization they have in mind would take our 
patent office, which has been part of our Government since the founding 
of our Constitution and corporatize it. What does that mean? That means 
that the patent examiners, the men and women who make judicial 
decisions as to what our rights are to new properties of technology, 
they are defining what your property rights are for the new 
technologies that are being created. Those patent examiners are going 
to lose their civil service protection.
  So after all of these years, after 100 years of protection for our 
patent examiners, they will now be put in a situation where outside 
pressures will be brought on them because they do not have their civil 
service protection. This is an invitation to corruption. We have seen 
an invitation to steal our technology and now we see an invitation to 
corruption by opening our system up to pressures that it has never been 
opened up to before.
  In one fell swoop, our international competitors will have destroyed 
the edge that we had on the world, the edge that ensured that America 
would be not only a land of freedom, but a land of prosperity for the 
common person. This is not just happening on its own. There are 
powerful forces at work that are behind H.R. 3460, the Steal American 
Technology Act, and are trying to fundamentally change the patent 
system.
  Now, why is this? Why would they want to do that? They would want to 
do that because overseas they too understand that the development of 
new technology has been America's greatest leverage in our competition 
with the rest of the world.
  What made us competitive? what made our people be able to keep their 
jobs and have decent standards of living in the past was because we had 
machines that permitted us to do things that could not be done overseas 
cheaper with slave labor. And that is ever more true as we enter into a 
new age where technology is even more important.
  America is being neutered of the patent protection and the patent 
system that has kept our people free and prosperous, and future 
generations, maybe even our own children, will say, well, did we not 
always used to be the ones that came up with all the new ideas? Weren't 
we the ones that were ahead of the game because we were on the cutting 
edge of technology?
  But that will be a distant memory because we will have changed the 
fundamental laws that made that so with America, because our edge was 
not because we were of any particular race or religion or culture. It 
was because our laws developed around the spirit of individualism and 
creativity and freedom that were consistent with a prosperous society. 
And now we are, or at least our leaders are, trying to harmonize our 
laws with those of Japan. That is not the way that we are going to have 
a better life for our people.
  This is a desperate fight. Those who are opposing the Steal American 
Technologies Act, H.R. 3460, do not have the resources of these big 
corporations who see themselves as players in the international arena, 
rather than people who are concerned basically about the well-being of 
American people.
  We do not have the resources to fight them. H.R. 359, my bill that 
would restore the guaranteed patent term, we have got very few 
resources behind us.
  And even though we have had 202 cosponsors, we have not been able to 
move it through the system. I would hope that the American people know 
that democracy still flourishes here because they can get involved. It 
is not just the people in this body. It is not just Members of Congress 
who will make the decision.

  If people actually talk to their Congressman, if people actually go 
and ask their Congressman, Hey, how are you going to vote on this Steal 
American Technologies Act, H.R. 3460? They will find that their 
Congressman is also listening to them.
  And I would hope that we can prove that our democracy still functions 
and it is not just powerful interests in Washington, DC who want to 
harmonize our laws with Japan that can guide the future of our country.
  I have every faith in this country. With technology, we will continue 
to be the land of liberty that our fathers foresaw. We will continue to 
be that hope of the world, that shining city on the hill where even the 
average people live decent lives if they work hard and are honest.
  But this will not happen if in this new age of technology that we 
have changed the fundamental laws and protections that have assured 
American progress in the past.
  This is a desperate fight and it is a fight not that many Americans 
understand. Patent law seems such a boring subject. In fact, I cannot 
get on talk radio programs. People, ask you about this and they say 
patent law? Are you crazy? Patent law, it is a very difficult issue to 
understand because it takes longer than 10 seconds to describe it.
  But tonight I am telling you that we are in the midst of a battle 
that will make all the difference. If this scheme to harmonize our 
technology laws with those of Japan succeeds, our people will pay the 
consequences.
  Now, what is the excuse the other side uses? Obviously, people 
honestly disagree. Not everybody on the other side is for bringing 
America down.

[[Page H5643]]

Most of the Congressmen on the other side of this issue have been told, 
well, the reason we have to change this law is because there is 
something called a submarine patent. That this is a big problem.
  What a submarine patent is that if somebody invents something and 
instead of trying to get their patent, like almost everybody wants to 
get their patent as soon as possible, 99 percent of all inventors are 
struggling, please give me my patent as soon as possible. They want 
their patent, but some, maybe a few, maybe 1 percent, I do not know, 
are trying to elongate this. They are actually playing the system so 
that the patent is not issued right away and so that when it is issued 
and they have that 17 years, it is actually a much longer period, maybe 
20 years or maybe 25 years.
  This is a very small problem numerically. Only a very few people want 
this, because most inventors know that technological change is 
happening so quickly, they have to get the patent issued so quickly 
because otherwise they will lose out, because new technology will be 
developed.
  But we are told that this problem is so important. I would say that I 
believe this is a small problem and can be dealt with. I have told 
everyone in this debate, I will support any effort to deal with the 
submarine patent problem that does not eliminate the guaranteed patent 
term. And I have been willing to compromise for 1\1/2\ years on this, 
but yet it is funny. Those proponents of H.R. 3460 were never able to 
come back to me with what I asked.
  I said, anything except eliminating the guaranteed patent term we can 
put into a bill and then that will work on these people who are trying 
to elongate the process. I, in fact, even put something into my bill 
that said if someone is elongating the process and not trying to get 
their patent issued, that after 60 months it will be published whether 
or not the patent has been issued.

  And so, I said, okay, if someone is intentionally trying to get their 
patent so it is not issued, let us clamp down on that. But no one would 
ever come up with these suggestions. All they would suggest is we have 
got to eliminate the guaranteed patent term. That is all. That is all 
we can do. There is no other alternative but eliminate that guaranteed 
patent term.
  It is very similar to saying I have got a toe that really hurts me, 
and so what I am going to do is cut my foot off in order to make sure 
my toe does not hurt me anymore. And that is the answer I have been 
getting back.
  But some people, and many people in this body will never look at this 
issue with any depth because they are involved with many other issues. 
The issue we just heard about, the FDA, some Congressmen have spent 
enormous time and effort to try to get reforms in the FDA. They 
probably do not know about this patent issue, and they may accept the 
arguments of these big companies, these multinational corporations 
saying that in order to stop this submarine patent we have actually got 
to make this change or we have got to have a harmonization with Japan.
  Well, we need to make sure that the American people and the American 
workers speak up. It should be evident to everyone that we are not 
going to have a better system by eliminating the civil service 
protection of our patent examiners by opening that up to outside 
pressures and corruption. That is not going to help anything.
  We are not going to have a better system if our inventors do not have 
that guaranteed system because what will happen, if indeed their 
patents are held up as compared to past patents? For example, you know, 
we know that no matter how long it takes the bureaucracy to work in the 
past, they have had 17 years of protection. If they end up with 5 years 
of protection because it has been held up 15 years and there is only 5 
years left, who is benefiting by that?
  Well, look very closely. That 5 years, instead of 17 years worth of 
protection, that 5 years is going to result in very few royalties as 
compared to the 17 years of protection. Those hundreds of millions of 
dollars of royalties, even billions of dollars of royalties that would 
have been coming to the United States now are going to be in the bank 
accounts of huge foreign corporations that will not have to pay the 
royalty, even if they do not steal American technology and they just 
pay for it via a royalty.
  So they, themselves, if they operate totally legally within the new 
system, will find that the wealth that should be coming here for our 
ideas and creativity will be staying right in those foreign bank 
accounts.
  This is not the way to make it better for the United States, and it 
certainly will not make it better if every time our people come up with 
a great new idea--I know some people who have developed a new system 
that will dramatically bring down the pollution coming out of 
automobile engines, dramatically reduce this. They have been frightened 
to death because they are afraid that before they can actually go in 
the market with their invention, that what will happen is the word will 
leak out and all over the world, people will be stealing their 
technology and what they have a right to receive the benefit from 
developing this, that they will lose the profit from their own 
invention and never be able to recoup it.

  Well, under the system that they are talking about, the Steal 
American Technology Act would say to my friends, You cannot file for a 
patent unless you are willing after 18 months to let everybody in the 
world know about every single detail of your invention.
  Is this going to spur innovation and creativity and wealth creation 
in the United States? Our people are going to pull back. Investors not 
going to invest in American technologies. That is not going to make 
things better.
  The shortening or eliminating the guaranteed patent term will hurt 
our major universities. One of the biggest supporters of my 
legislation, H.R. 359 are American universities, MIT, Harvard, all of 
these universities that have patents and know that they need a 
guaranteed patent term for them to have an asset.
  Also the small business community is dramatically behind H.R. 359, 
and opposed to the H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act.
  We have the little guy versus the big guy. That is what is going on 
in a very quiet but crucial struggle in Washington, DC, today. The 
little guy versus the big guy.
  I believe in the United States of America. I believe the little guy 
can still win. I believe the small inventor who comes up with a new 
idea has been the main spring of the progress and the prosperity that 
we have had in the United States of America. And I know that if the 
American people can understand what the essence of this issue is all 
about, that they will insist that their Congressman not support the 
Steal American Technologies Act, H.R. 3460, but instead, will demand 
that the guaranteed patent term that we have enjoyed as a right of 
Americans for over a century be restored to the American people.

                                  2230

  This, as I say, is a fight that probably will not even be noticed in 
the history books; especially if we win, it will not be noticed. People 
will never know about this fight if we win. The American standard of 
living and American competitiveness will be what it is.
  Mr. Speaker, this is something that people have learned to take for 
granted. We have taken it for granted that young people have great 
opportunities in their lives. We have taken for granted that they wear 
shoes, that there are shoe for everybody in our society. We take that 
for granted. That has not been the history of the rest of the world. If 
we harmonize our laws and we downgrade our rights so that they are the 
same as every other country in the world, America will not be America.
  So tonight, I hope that this battle will not be remembered because, 
if we win, people will just go right on and take this for granted. But 
if we lose, someday someone may read this Congressional Record and say 
this was a crucial turning point and no one ever noticed because the 
concept of patent law and intellectual property rights was just too 
esoteric for regular people to understand. This is at a time when we 
are going into a global marketplace, into a new era of technology, when 
as never before the standard of living of the American people will be 
tied to innovation and tied to creativity and tied to the new 
technologies of the coming age.

[[Page H5644]]

  Mr. Speaker, I hope that those future Americans will not have to look 
back in the Congressional Record and see this speech and say it is too 
bad they did not recognize what was going on and complaining about the 
system. Instead, I hope that they never read that because the freedom 
and progress that we have is taken for granted and will be the same 
freedom and progress 100 years from now and 20 years from now that it 
was when our forefathers, Benjamin Franklin, that great technologist, 
Thomas Jefferson, these great champions of human liberties, not just 
for Americans but for all people, when they founded our country 225 
years ago.

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