[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 90 (Tuesday, June 18, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H6430-H6431]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1315
              AMERICAN PATENT PROTECTION BEING JEOPARDIZED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Stearns). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to warn my colleagues that 
powerful interest groups are involved in one of the most insidious 
attacks on the well-being of the American people that I have seen in my 
8 years in Congress. It is an insidious attack because a decade from 
now, if these powerful interests succeed, America will have lost its 
competitive edge, the standard of living of our people will be in 
decline, and they will never know what hit them.
  What is happening is an attack on America's ability to remain the 
number one technological power in the world. America has had the 
strongest patent system in the world. Our citizens have enjoyed patent 
protection that other citizens in other countries have not enjoyed. 
Thus, our inventors and investors in new innovation have given us 
technology that has provided the American people with a standard of 
living far beyond those overseas, and has permitted our people, even 
though they receive more money for their work, to outcompete people who 
receive less pay overseas.
  The American people have enjoyed the technological lead that has 
given us the light bulb, the telegraph, the telephone, the reaper, the 
steamboat, and, yes, the airplane.
  Today our standard of living is tied to technology and in the future 
will be tied even more to technology, but today we see our patent 
system, which has done so much for our people, under attack and 
targeted by powerful foreign interests and multinational corporations.
  These powerful interests have already eliminated the guaranteed 
patent term of 17 years, which was the right of Americans for 130 
years, and it was eliminated in an underhanded fashion by slipping it 
into the GATT implementation legislation, even though that change was 
not mandated by GATT itself.
  Now for the knockout punch. We will soon have a bill come to the 
floor which will end patent protection in America as we know it. The 
bill, H.R. 3460, which I have labeled the Steal American Technologies 
Act, is really named the Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act. This piece of 
legislation will demand, mandate, that every American inventor, when he 
applies for a patent, after 18 months, whether or not that patent has 
been issued or not, it will be published for the world to see. Every 
single detail of new American technology will be available to the world 
to steal. Every pirate in the world and the Asian market will be 
producing our technology before our patents are even issued.
  It also eliminates the Patent Office itself, something that has been 
part of our Government since the Constitution, and replaces it with a 
corporatized Patent Office, meaning a semi-Government, semiprivate 
corporation, like the Post Office, which has very little of the 
congressional oversight that the current Patent Office has.
  By the way, that same move strips patent examiners. These men and 
women who have dedicated their lives to making the judicial decisions 
as to who owns what technology, they will be stripped of their civil 
service protection, inviting corruption: First, publication of every 
last secret we have to the pirates of the world; second, stripping our 
patent examiners, our line of defense, against corruption, of their 
civil service protection.
  Finally, this bill will offer rights to foreign corporations, as well 
as huge American multinational corporations, to challenge existing 
patents. Our technology even today will be under attack when the people 
from all over the world will be able to come in with huge finances and 
force our people to defend the patents that have already been granted 
them.

  America's corporate giants, strangely enough, have signed on to this 
technological rip-off. First, they would like to rip off the little guy 
themselves without having pay royalties, and many of these giant 
corporations in our country have interlocking directorates and 
investors from all over the

[[Page H6431]]

world. They have signed on to destroying the American patent system as 
we have known it for the last 130 years.
  This is truly a battle between the little guy and the big guy. H.R. 
3460, the Steal American Technologies Act, is being pushed through the 
system by big business. Small business, the investors, the NIFB, 
colleges and universities that get monies from royalties from their own 
inventive processes, they are behind the Rohrabacher substitute for 
H.R. 3460.
  This will be a battle that determines America's future, but the 
American people will have trouble understanding it. Let us hope they 
call their Congressman to let them know they will be watching and 
America's interests should be protected.

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