[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 90 (Tuesday, June 18, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H6499-H6506]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      PROTECTING AMERICA'S PATENTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fox of Pennsylvania). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Rohrabacher] is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I agree that we voted today to get to 
the root causes and to condemn the hatred that resulted in the warped 
mind that resulted in the burning of black churches in America, or 
synagogues or any other kind of churches, that this is not something we 
can tolerate in America.
  But let us say the root causes of that type of bigotry are found in 
the same type of actions that try to limit people's right to speak 
because they disagree with you. They feel you have a

[[Page H6500]]

right to prevent someone from speaking, whether at a high school 
graduation or a college graduation. Discourtesy is one step away from 
tyranny, and I have seen that throughout my life.
  Clarence Thomas is a man of extraordinary courage, honor, and 
intelligence. He has stood up against a liberal political machine that 
he knew would try to destroy him personally rather than debate his 
ideas. It is tragic that this mean-spirited attack continues on Justice 
Thomas. He deserves the respect of America and at the very least he 
deserves to be treated courteously. Unfortunately, many liberals do not 
know what the meaning of courtesy is.

  With that, let me say that one thing about America is that we have 
diverse values. This is something we rejoice in. We are a land of 
diversity. People cannot say it enough. This is a blessed land. Yes, it 
has faults, many faults. We will work together as Americans who love 
freedom to try to fix those faults.
  That is the way it has been since our founding. We had a lot of 
faults back then. While I am grateful to our Founding Fathers and our 
founding mothers, I do not idealize them as being perfect. But in those 
days 200 years ago, they did have a dream and they did give us 
something to work with, and we have built a great Nation. They began 
that great Nation and expect us to try to perfect it.
  Our Nation was founded not by Puritans alone--Puritans played a role 
in it--but also by malcontents, nonconformists, individualists, 
pathfinders, free thinkers, explorers, developers, people who were 
fiercely independent and lovers of freedom. Yes, there were also slaves 
that were brought here against their will, and we tried to correct that 
which was a major blot on America's soul.
  They were an optimistic lot, those Americans of 100 and 200 years 
ago, firmly believing that with liberty and technology, ours would be a 
shining city on a hill, a beacon of hope for all mankind, where our 
problems and our faults would be corrected but where the common man, 
even then, through hard work and responsible behavior could raise a 
family in decency, and all would have an opportunity to improve 
themselves and build a Nation as they did.
  This may sound like hyperbole but it is not hyperbole. Yes, we had 
faults, let us admit it. But the fact is we also had dreams. Those who 
founded our country were dreamers. They could see fields that would 
feed a hungry world and factories that would raise the standard of 
living of working people, and in times of great peril would become an 
arsenal for democracy to which freedom-loving people of the world could 
turn for salvation.
  They knew America would succeed. The fundamentals were here. Freedom, 
guaranteed rights for all people. Yes, in the beginning it was not all 
people. Today we have not totally reached that dream but that is what 
we are trying to do. Here was also this richness of diversity that 
would make America unique among the nations.

                              {time}  2130

  Our new country would not be held together by a common culture or 
common race or common religion. No, it would be a love of liberty that 
would unite us and a commitment to the principles of liberty and 
justice that would hold us together. One thing else gave them an 
unbridled positive view toward the future. They believed that 
technology would lift the standard of all human beings with the 
production of new wealth.
  America would not be about dividing wealth, it would be about 
building, planting, engineering, and creating new wealth. After all, we 
were the most undeveloped country of the world at that time. Thomas 
Jefferson's home in Monticello is filled with his personal inventions, 
inventions of little technologies that he know would help lift some of 
the burden right there on his own farm and, if emulated, lift the 
burden elsewhere throughout the country.
  Ben Franklin was not just the grand old man of the American 
revolution. He was an internationally acclaimed technologist, having 
invented the pot-bellied stove, bifocals and having experimented with 
electricity. I do not even know if children these days, when they read 
their history books, know about Benjamin Franklin and his technological 
endeavors. They might not even know about Ben Franklin, for all I know.
  Well, it is no coincidence that our Founding Fathers wrote into our 
Constitution a mandate for the establishment of a national Patent 
Office where any person could register an invention and would have a 
guaranteed property right to ownership of that innovation for a 
specific number of years. This was to ensure that inventors and 
investors would have an incentive to create the means to solve problems 
and to uplift the standard of living of our people. The guaranteed 
patent term works. America had the strongest patent laws in the world 
and our people reaped an unimaginable reward.
  It was no mistake that it was here that Robert Fulton created the 
steamboat. How many people know that the steam engine was created long 
before Robert Fulton? In fact, in ancient Greece, there was a steam 
engine, but they did not believe the common person should have burdens 
lifted off of his shoulder, and in fact a steam engine had been put on 
a boat crossing the Rhine River much earlier but the boatmen gathered 
round and the boatman's guild forced that steam engine off the boat. 
But here Robert Fulton was able to put that steam engine on a boat and 
able to patent that concept and to create a piece of equipment that 
would change the world and uplift the standard of living of mankind.
  What about Eli Whitney's cotton gin, which created enough clothing 
for people to wear and brought down the price of clothing, or Cyrus 
McCormick's reaper, or Thomas Edison's electric light bulb, or Sam 
Morse's telegraph, or Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, things that 
changed the world forever. Where were they created? Where were they 
invented? Right her in the United States.
  In the late 1880's, it was seriously suggested, in fact, because our 
people had been so creative and created so much that the Patent Office 
be shut down because, ``Everything that can be invented has been 
invented.'' At that very moment, two working men, brothers who owned a 
modest bicycle repair shop, were working on a machine that would lift 
mankind into the heavens.
  Mr. Speaker, the Wright brothers demonstrated the indomitable spirit, 
what was hailed as exemplary, as the best of our country. Yet these two 
people were basically on their own. They had some investors. They were 
not men of education or wealth. They were ordinary working people who 
changed the lives of every person on this planet.
  So why has it been America? Why was it that those two individuals 
were able to succeed? Certainly not our race because we have many 
different races and ethnic backgrounds. It certainly was not our 
religion. We have many religions. It is not our great universities. The 
Wright brothers never went to college, although I will have to admit 
our educational institutions certainly have helped this. The genius, 
the unparalleled inventiveness of our people can be found in the fact 
that our laws have protected inventors.
  We have had the most stringent and all-encompassing patent laws and 
patent protection of any country of the world. Our laws have fostered 
private investment in innovation. The mainspring of America's progress 
can be found, above all else, in the guaranteed patent term and the 
honest enforcement of our laws, so that inventors knew their rights 
would he recognized and protected, investors knew they would be 
permitted to reap a reward for risking their money they invested in 
unproven technology.

  One of the lesser known inventors in America, a man who had 
tremendous impact on the living of our people, was a man named Jan 
Matzeliger. He came from the humblest of beginnings and for years he 
was eating corn mush and just barely surviving. Because he was an 
American of Color, a black American, he suffered unforgivable 
discrimination, turned away even from churches where he sought to 
worship God. As he labored in a shoe company, strenuously stretching, 
cutting and stitching, he visualized a machine that would revolutionize 
production. With little education, he wrote and traced his idea for a 
complicated piece of equipment.
  Living in poverty, he found a couple of old cigar boxes and strings 
to simulate a working model, and although he

[[Page H6501]]

had no status, no credentials and certainly no collateral, he caught 
the ear and the eye of two investors who bank-rolled his venture for a 
hefty share of the profit. On March 20, 1883, a patent was issued by 
the U.S. Patent Office.
  Within a few years, Matzeliger's ``lasting machine'' is what it is 
called, ``lasting machine'' was standard equipment for shoe 
manufacturing. The price of shoes began to drop as the average worker, 
instead of putting out one or two pairs an hours, could put out 50 
pairs an hour. The price of shoes was cut by 50 percent. Untold 
millions of people benefited from Matzeliger's invention. For 
Matzeliger and his investors, they had the guaranteed patent term of 17 
years in which to reap the rewards of an innovation that had uplifted 
ordinary people. Matzeliger lived a fruitful life and a full life. When 
he died, he left a considerable sum of money to the churches of his 
community. But it was stipulated in his will that none of the money 
should go to any church that turned him away because of the color of 
his skin.
  America should have respected all the rights of all of its citizens, 
but even in that great time of discrimination, the rights of 
technological ownership, through the patent law, was so ingrained in 
our people that the patent rights of black Americans and people of 
color were protected. This commitment served our Nation well.
  Now, I am not saying that all of the patent rights and all the 
property rights of black Americans were protected because they 
obviously were not. But obviously they were protected to the point 
where this black American was able to benefit greatly from his 
invention. America went on and basically the history of our country can 
be seen in the development of these new technologies. We went from a 
desolate frontier to a powerhouse of freedom and opportunity. There 
were those who see the fundamental changes in America, and they are 
trying to affect what we do in America and they believe in America. But 
sometimes people who are trying to affect the course of our history are 
not so up front about their goals for our country.
  One of the things Bill Clinton did after becoming President, one of 
the first things he did was to send Bruce Lehman, his appointee, to 
head America's Patent Office to Japan. Now, is that not funny? Right 
after getting elected, he appoints someone to head the Patent Office 
and immediately sends him to Japan. There, Bruce Lehman, the new head 
of our Patent Office, concluded a hushed agreement to harmonize 
America's patent law to that of Japan's.
  Now, we got almost nothing in exchange for the changes, for exchange 
for our changes. We got almost nothing in exchange in the sense that 
the Japanese law did not change almost anything. In fact, there were 
just a few anemic restrictions that were placed on Japanese corporate 
interferences and that is about it. But we, on the other hand, changed 
and agreed to totally harmonize our patent law with that of Japan. Now 
that may sound really strange to the American people. It may sound 
really strange to our colleagues that someone goes overseas and makes 
an agreement to change the basic law of our land, which has been in 
place since the founding of our Constitution, and make it mirror that 
of a foreign country.
  We did that in exchange for some little anemic change in the Japanese 
law. By the way, that promise may be very similar to Japan's promises 
to open their markets. Decades ago, Japan promised us they would open 
their markets, and basically they promised and they promised and they 
promised. Yet decades later, we still are having trouble getting our 
goods into the Japanese market. Perhaps this even weak little thing 
that they gave us in exchange for totally changing our patent law, 
maybe they will treat that the same way as nothing more than scribbling 
on a piece of paper. In the meantime, Bruce Lehman and multinational 
corporations, are doing their God-awful best to change our patent law, 
our fundamental patent law. They made the agreement with the Japanese 
to do it.
  Mr. Speaker, now they are coming here with legislation to the 
Congress to fulfill their promises to change or law and make it like 
the Japanese law. Well, they tried to do it as quickly as possible and 
as quietly as possible. Step No. 1 was eliminating that guaranteed 
patent term of 17 years. This has been a right of Americans for 
American inventors and American investors for 134 years; before that, 
it was a guaranteed patent term of 14 years. But it was always a 
guaranteed patent term. No matter how long it took you to get your 
patent issued, once you had applied, if it took them 10 years to get it 
issued, you would still have 17 years of guaranteed protection.
  Well, trying to keep this downgrading of American patent rights quiet 
while, instead of coming to Congress originally with the very first 
attack on the patent system, and that is the legislation of changing 
our patent laws, a provision was snuck into the implementing 
legislation for the General Agreement on Trade and Tariff. Now that may 
sound odd as well. But you see, if you put something in that 
implementing legislation for the GATT Agreement, Congress was only able 
to vote up or down on this one omnibus bill. No amendments were 
allowed. Thus, a Member of Congress would be forced to vote against the 
entire world trading system in order to vote against changing our 
patent law.
  Many Members of Congress had no idea that they put this into there 
because this was total, the tactic was a total betrayal because we were 
told that the only things that would be put into the GATT 
implementation legislation was that which was required by GATT itself. 
It was a betrayal on our citizens. The Members of Congress should 
understand that that indicates some foul play is going on. GATT again 
did not require the eliminating of the guaranteed patent term, so it 
should never have been put in there in the first place.
  Well, I created a stir when I found out that in the GATT 
implementation legislation was this unnecessary or unrequired 
provision, something that would dramatically change our laws, and so 
that was 1\1/2\ years ago. I was promised that there would be a chance 
to correct this part of the implementing legislation, that eventually 
on the floor we would get our chance to change this.
  Well, changes in the patent term of course are not easy to 
understand. Those people who are trying to fundamentally change how our 
Government has acted and what or fundamental laws are on the patent 
term know that this is a difficult issue for people to understand. They 
are relying on that ignorance, on that inability of Americans to focus 
on the intricacies of these kind of laws in order to do us in and to 
bring down America as the No. 1 leading economic power in the world.
  Traditionally, when an American inventor or investor has filed for a 
patent, no matter how long it took, remember this was the traditional 
law, the Patent Office could take as long as they wanted, and many of 
the major patents take 5, 10, even 15 years. But once it was issued, 
there was a guaranteed patent term of 17 years to reap the benefits of 
new technology. Foreigners or anybody else would use that technology 
who have to pay royalties to those people who invented the new 
technologies. Again, it was their right to a guaranteed patent term of 
17 years, and up until 1\1/2\ years ago, when that provision was snuck 
into GATT and the first move to harmonize our system with Japan's was 
put in place. During the time before, and this is before this change, 
when the patent was issued, everyone was secure in knowing they would 
have that 17 years of full benefit.
  This system not only encouraged inventors but it encouraged 
investors. Thus private dollars by the billions have been allocated in 
our society for developing new technologies. Matzeliger's two investors 
knew that, no matter how long it took him to get that patent, that, 
once he got it, they all would benefit from this invention because they 
would have a guaranteed patent term of 17 years. We did not rely on 
Government bureaucracy. We relied on private investors. We did not rely 
on taxes by the Federal Government. We relief on innovation through the 
private sector because we gave people an incentive to invest by 
guaranteeing a patent term.

                              {time}  2145

  We relied on freedom and the profit motive. Well, the new system, 
which is

[[Page H6502]]

nothing more than the Japanese system superimposed on us, is much 
different, though again it is very hard to understand the significance 
of these changes and these differences.
  Under the new code, and that is under the code that was put in under 
this GATT implementation legislation, the day that an inventor fights 
for a patent, that day 20 years later he has no more rights, he or she 
has no more rights to that patent and to that technology. Twenty years 
later, and the time is up.
  If it takes 10 years, and, by the way, this is the system now in 
place that replaced the old system, if it takes 10 years for a patent 
to be issued because the bureaucracy is slow or outsiders are trying to 
slow down the process, in the past the investor still had the 
guaranteed patent term of 17 years, even if it took 10 years to issue. 
Under this new system, after 10 years one-half of the investor's patent 
term has been eaten up. He or she only has 10 years left. In other 
words, the clock is ticking against the inventor, against the 
innovator, and not against the bureaucracy.
  Now, anyone who has studied the process knows that it is not unusual 
for breakthrough technologies, that is the innovations that change the 
world, these are the innovations that we as Americans always invented, 
that the innovations that produce the tens of billions of dollars of 
new wealth often take from 5, 10, and even 15 years for a patent to 
issue.
  For example, the laser took 21 years before the patent was granted. 
That means under the new system, the inventor of the laser would have 
received no benefit, zero benefit, from his invention, and the 
investors in that project would have reaped no benefits. The 
microprocessor took 17 years. The microprocessor took 17 years. Under 
the old system, once it was issued that man had 17 years of patent term 
left. Under the new system, he would have 3 years left.
  Polypropylene, the plastic they make in which they use to store milk 
and other containers, took 33 years before the inventor received the 
patent. He would have had absolutely no patent protection, and in fact 
would have probably died a dissolute person knowing that his invention 
had been stolen from him.
  Now, what does this all mean when the clock is ticking against the 
inventor? It means the bureaucracy and special interests, not only 
domestic interests, but foreign interests as well, have leverage on the 
inventor. During negotiations, which are part of the patent process 
when someone is looking to get a patent granted, he has to go through 
these negotiations, the inventor, if the clock is ticking against him, 
he can be ground down, because he will or she is vulnerable. If a 
patent can be delayed and the time shortened, what does that mean? 
Well, it means all those royalties that were once going into the bank 
account, if you can shorten the time period that the person actually 
holds that patent, because now you elongated the process and he only 
has that 20 years, and it is ticking against him, all those royalties 
that were going into the bank account of American inventors, because 
they have that 17 guaranteed years, now they do not have it. All that 
money that used to be flowing into their bank accounts is now rerouted 
into the account of huge foreign and domestic and multinational 
corporations.
  To claim stolen royalties, of course, someone is eventually issued a 
patent. An individual must pay lawyers and legal specialists to go to 
court. Get the picture? The little American inventor going to 
Samsung or going to Mitsubishi or going to Sony and trying to beat them 
in court, especially in a Japanese court? The little guy in our country 
gets ground down. The Wright Brothers, had that law been in place, 
would be smashed by the Mitsubishis of the world.

  Now, get that. The Wright Brothers, the equivalent of a Wright 
brother today, beaten down by Mitsubishi, and we end up in the years 
ahead with the Japanese building all of the major airplanes flown all 
around the world, and Japanese aircraft workers living at a higher 
standard of living, and our aerospace engineers living in poverty.
  This system which our Patent Commissioner Bruce Lehman wants to 
emulate, he wants American law to be like the Japanese, has ill-served 
the Japanese people. It might have helped some of these big 
corporations and those people who run the corporations, but little, if 
any, innovation is born in Japan. Few, if any, inventions are started 
there. The Japanese are rightfully known as copiers and improvers, not 
inventors nor innovators. Their laws, which Bruce Lehman wants America 
to emulate, have permitted powerful business conglomerates to run 
rough-shod over their people. They have beaten down anyone who raises 
his or her head.
  As far as technological development, in Japan an inventor who applies 
for a significant patent is immediately confronted with hostile 
interferences with the process. Pressures, official and unofficial, are 
applied to beat down the applicant so that by the time the patent is 
issued it is a hollow shell. The rewards are limited.
  However, the rewards are great for some people in Japan. Yeah, the 
big guys, the giant corporations envelop the innovation and pay little, 
if anything, in royalties for the benefit they receive, or should we 
say steal. It is the difference between a society based on individual 
freedom versus collectivist egalitarianism. During the patent debate 
that we have been having here over the last year, Bruce Lehman, the 
head of the American Patent Office, constantly claimed the purpose of a 
strong patent law is to facilitate the dissemination of information to 
the society as a whole. That is the ultimate in antifreedom, 
collectivist freedom, and has nothing to do with what our Founding 
Fathers had in mind.
  In our country, the rights of the individual are paramount. These 
patent laws were meant to protect individuals' property rights over the 
rights of necessarily some huge interest group claiming to speak for 
the benefit of society as a whole.
  We basically believe the individual has the right to own his or her 
prompt and especially if it is his or her own creation. That is what 
our Founding Fathers did when they put the Patent Office into our 
Constitution. Our respect for the property rights of the small farmer 
and the individual businessman is based on an understanding that by 
protecting the rights of the little guy, especially the property 
rights, all of us are going to benefit in the long run.
  We believe it is through individual endeavors and personal 
responsibility that someone prospers, and when a population of 
individuals acts in that way, the society prospers. Lehman's approach 
treats individuals as secondary and in a collectivist whole, who if 
they insist on their rights for themselves, must and will be crushed.
  Of course those trying to challenge our system will never admit this. 
Those trying to change the fundamental patent law will never believe 
that is what is really guiding them and that is their philosophical 
premise.
  A change is coming, not as part of a major debate, basically a major 
debate in our whole democratic process. That is not the way the change 
in our society and patent rights for future technology is happening. 
Instead, it is happening by subterfuge, sneaking provisions into treaty 
legislation or an omnibus bill so that the evil that is taking place 
will be hard to understand and the actual changes will be obscured by 
all the rest of the things in the bill.
  When one can force the advocates who are trying to press these patent 
changes, when we force them to engage, they claim that their goal is 
not to destroy America's traditional patent system. That is not what we 
are trying to do, they say, no. Instead, they are trying to solve a new 
problem that has been plaguing American business, and that is this 
problem that basically is enriching inventors. They say these inventors 
are being enriched, and these inventors are the ones manipulating and 
gaming the patent system so that by the time that a 17-year patent term 
is actually granted to someone, that they have actually more time to 
collect on the other side of their patent.
  What they throw up as an excuse for changing the fundamentals and 
eliminating the right of Americans to a 17-year guaranteed patent term 
is something we call the submarine patent. Well, that is what they say. 
You people are gaming the system.
  Certainly, that is true. A few, a very few self-serving inventors 
have been

[[Page H6503]]

able to elongate the process in which their patent application is being 
considered, thus putting off the issuing date, which means that the 17 
years of patent protection which they are guaranteed end a little bit 
later rather than a little bit sooner. Of course, they are not getting 
the protection up front as well during that time period.
  Some inventors enjoy royalty benefits then in the outer years, and if 
they had not gamed the system they would not be receiving the same 
benefits in the outer years of their 17-year guaranteed patent time, 
because their patent would have expired.
  Well, making things worse, according to the other side, if the system 
is gamed for a number of years, let us say somebody is able to game the 
system for 10 years to prevent their patent from being issued. Other 
companies may come up with the same idea and those companies must now, 
because the other person has already applied for their patent, those 
other companies must pay royalties to the submarine patenter when he 
comes to the surface and gets his patent. Because a patent application 
is secret until the patent is issued, the other companies did not even 
know they were going to have to pay royalties for using this 
innovation.
  Thus, it is a ripoff and unfair. That is the argument on the other 
side.
  Submarine patents, however, may or may not be the problem. Whatever. 
That some people game the process, well, that could be true, but that 
is no excuse for eliminating the guaranteed patent term of the American 
people. That is like saying if someone abuses the right of freedom of 
speech, that we can come in and destroy people's right for freedom of 
speech. Or someone abuses a religious freedom, we just eliminate the 
religious freedom guaranteed our people.
  Let us remember this: The vast majority of all patent applicants, and 
I am talking about more than 99 percent, are doing everything in their 
power that they can possibly do to get their patent issued as soon as 
possible. They beg, they plead, please, issue the patent, because they 
will not receive any benefits until it is issued.
  By the way, those people who are gaming the system to elongate the 
process, some new invention might come along that makes their invention 
obsolete and they are taking that chance. That is why almost all 
inventors, nearly all inventors, do everything they can to get the 
patent issued right away. As you know, this new innovation could leave 
them behind, whether they are submariners or people trying to get 
through the process and the bureaucracy is not issuing the patent.

  A few submarine patents do represent a minuscule part of the system 
and have been a problem. So this problem can be dealt with by reforming 
the process, not by eliminating the guaranteed rights of all Americans.
  My bill, in fact, H.R. 359, which will be on the floor as a 
substitute to the Steal American Technologies Act, H.R. 3460, includes 
a provision to publish any application of an inventor who uses a 
continuance to intentionally delay the process. Over and over again, in 
the year and a half that I pushed on this issue, I have offered to put 
into law anything that would curb submarine patenting, which some 
people claim is a big problem and I am saying it is a minuscule 
problem, but I will do anything, put it in my bill, just so long as the 
change does not eliminate the guaranteed patent term.
  Let us have it flagged. If someone is delaying it, let us try to 
change it by getting administrative change. Let us make sure that if 
someone is delaying the process, it goes to a special board to make 
sure they cannot delay it.
  But the other side would have no compromise. They would not agree to 
any changes, except eliminate the guaranteed patent term. Why? Because 
that is what is in the Japanese law. In order to harmonize Japanese 
law, that is what we had to do.
  So, what was their motive if they were not going to change the law? 
It might have been they wanted to harmonize our law with Japan, and 
submarine patent, well, maybe that was just something used as an excuse 
or perhaps they were really upset about it. But whatever it is, let us 
say this: That if someone tells you that they are concerned about your 
health and you are complaining to a doctor, you have trusted yourself 
to someone to make a medical decision for you, and have a hangnail on 
your foot, if that doctor insists on cutting your leg off in order to 
correct that problem with your hangnail, you better get a new doctor.

                              {time}  2200

  And that is what they are proposing here. We have a submarine patent 
problem that affects a minuscule number of people, so we are going to 
destroy the patent rights of all of the American people to a guaranteed 
patent right.
  Well, that makes no sense. And if a doctor tried to tell me, well, 
no, I am really concerned; I am concerned about your health, and that 
is why we are going to cut the leg off. And when I say, well, do you 
not want to clip my toenail off rather than cut my whole leg off? No, 
no, we will cut the leg off, then you will not have any more hangnails. 
You should say wait a minute. Maybe you better think twice about that 
person's motives when he is trying to sell that kind of logic.
  Let me note that this change we are talking about which they 
implemented in the GATT implementation legislation was the first 
crucial step in harmonizing our patent laws to those of Japan, and that 
is what I assume is the real goal of this legislation of H.R. 3460, 
which will be coming, and the real purpose of these people's 
activities.
  Let us note this push for the harmonization with Japanese law started 
long before anyone ever heard of the term submarine patent. This has 
been going on for 10 years now, and yet no one ever heard of submarine 
patents all those years ago. Those words were not even part of the 
patent lexicon when the attempt was made to dismantle America's patent 
system and harmonize it with Japan so long ago.
  During the debate over patent law, Mr. Lehman has used the bogeyman 
of the submarine patents; yet when we have checked his figures, we 
found many of the so-called submarine patents he has spotlighted are 
not issued and published. Why? Yes, there are some patents that have 
not been published and not been issued for a long time. Do you know 
why? Almost all of them, not almost all but a huge portion of them are 
defense-related technologies.
  Yes, the figures Mr. Lehman has given trying to say these are 
submarine patents, a lot have been not issued because they deal with 
sensitive defense technologies we did not want the world to know about. 
But, again, if it is a problem in terms of having people game the 
system and delaying the application, we can handle it with basically 
administrative reforms, rather than totally obliterating the system and 
eliminating the guaranteed patent term.
  My bill, H.R. 359, would reinstate the guaranteed patent term of 17 
years and facilitate any action against the manipulation of the system. 
Then, by mandating the publication of applications of people who are 
intentionally delaying the system, we could prevent them from delaying 
the system and having a submarine patent.
  I am offering this as a substitute for H.R. 3460, which is a patent 
bill designed basically to complete the destruction of our current 
patent protection system. And basically this whole maneuver to destroy 
our patent system and replace it with the Japanese started, step one, 
with the GATT implementation legislation.
  H.R. 3460 is step two, and better than anything else it demonstrates 
what is really going on. This one is easy to understand. It is 
understandable to the point that it unmasks the goals of the very 
powerful international as well as domestic forces that are at work 
trying to change our patent system.
  H.R. 3460, which I call the Steal American Technologies Act, is 
officially called the Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act, is a package 
that obscures the mind-boggling provisions that it claims by lumping it 
together with other things, but not enough to obscure the real facts.

  One of the provisions introduced in this bill was introduced last 
year under a bill that was entitled the Patent Application Publications 
Act. Now this bill is part of 3460, the Patent Application Publication 
Act, that was really a title people could understand. Basically, it is 
early publication of patent applications. People can understand what 
those words mean. The title is

[[Page H6504]]

too self-explanatory, so that is why basically they changed it to the 
Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act.
  The provisions of this bill, now get into this, because everybody can 
understand what is going on when they hear this, this bill mandates 
that after 18 months every American patent application, that is every 
application of our innovators and our creators, when they apply, all 
this was always kept secret until the patent was issued in the past. 
Well, now it is mandated that every one of those applications, whether 
or not a patent has been issued, will be published for the world to 
see.
  Every thief, every brigand, every pirate, every multinational 
corporation, every Asian copycat will be handed the details of every 
application to our patent office. Our newest and most creative ideas 
will be outlined for them, even before the patent is issued to the 
American inventor. It is an invitation for every thief in the world to 
steal American technology. Lines will form at copy machines and fax 
machines to get this information out to America's worst enemies and our 
fiercest competitors.
  H.R. 3460 is entitled, as I say, the Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act. 
Again, the provisions that we are talking about, it is almost mind-
boggling that someone could, without shame, promote this on the floor 
of the House.
  The authors of this bill suggest that we should not worry about if 
domestic, foreign, and multilateral corporations steal the new ideas. 
The patent applicant, once he gets the patent issued, which may be 5 or 
10 years down the road, they can sue the new applicant, can sue the 
pirates once he has been issued that patent. The price tag on a simple 
infringement suit begins at one quarter of a million dollars.
  Boy, that makes you feel good, does it not? The average American is 
now going to be up against Sony, Mitsubishi, Honda, you name it, every 
company in Japan, and you might even have to go to court in Japan or 
China or Thailand, or anywhere else, in order to fight them. And you 
have to pay your legal bills and they have got the profit from your 
technology already to use as the basis to beat you in court.
  As this bill was being passed through the subcommittee, this bill 
already passed the subcommittee and the committee, I was in my office 
talking to the president of a medium-sized solar energy company in 
Ohio. And when I asked what would happen if this provision became law, 
he clenched his fist and angrily predicted that his Asian competitors 
would be manufacturing his new technologies before his patent was 
issued; that they would then use the profit from selling his new 
technology to defeat any court challenge and destroy his company in the 
process.
  His overseas competitors would have the further advantage, get into 
this, of never having to pay for the research and development of that 
new product in the first place. The Americans flip the bill, they use 
it, they develop the technology, profit from it, and they beat us in 
court with money that we have had to pay to develop the technology in 
the first place.
  This is a nightmare and it faces every American small and medium-
sized company. Anyone who cannot afford a stable of expensive lawyers 
is at the mercy of the worst thieves in the world. Of course, the big 
guys and the huge corporations are backing this change in our law 
because they want to globalize the world trading system, even if it 
means diminishing the rights of the American people.
  Those big guys, they have the contacts overseas to make sure their 
products are not being stolen, and of course they have the money to 
spend on lawyers to deter such thievery. But for the little guys, it is 
open season.
  Of course, we must do this. You have to remember, now, the reason we 
are doing this is to prevent the evil submarines, these evil submarine 
patenters who might elongate their patent by a couple of years. We have 
to make everybody in this country, we have to make them vulnerable to 
the worst thieves in the world because there are a few people who might 
want to elongate their patent protection for a few years by gaming the 
system in a submarine patent.
  Yes, I am sure that is really what it is all about. This provision is 
another part of harmonizing our patent law with Japan, and that is what 
this is really all about. It is not about submarines. That is baloney.
  Another provision of H.R. 3460 is, hold on to your hats because here 
is another provision, it is the abolition of the U.S. patent office. It 
is in our constitution and it has played a vital role in protecting the 
American people and the rights of the American people for all of these 
years. Yet now, H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act, will 
separate it from the Government, limiting congressional oversight.
  Now it is part of our Government, so Congress has a right to 
investigate. It will limit congressional oversight. H.R. 3460, the 
Moorhead-Schroeder Act, will make the patent office into a Government 
corporation, sort of like the post office.
  Now, I am in favor of privatization of services that our Government 
need not provide. Corporatization of a core function of Government, 
however, is a terrible idea. Something that the Government should do? 
Should we privatize all the judges in our country? Basically, we are 
trying to corporatize and take out of the Government's sphere the job 
of protecting the intellectual property rights of our people. This has 
been a core function of our Government since 1784.
  Along with corporatization, by the way, what comes with that? That is 
the stripping of our patent examiners. They do not have any oversight 
by Congress, or very little, and then they will strip these patent 
examiners of their civil service protection. This opens up all of these 
people to outside pressures and influences.
  These are the individuals, these patent examiners, who work really 
hard. They are trying to make determinations, basically quasi-legal 
decisions, to determine who owns what. Well, taking away their civil 
service protection is like stripping the robes off a judge. It opens 
the door to corruption of the entire process. And if the patent office 
is corporatized, the head of the patent office, guess who it is, Bruce 
Lehman, Mr. Harmonizer of our laws with Japan, can make the changes 
that he and the board of directors want to make, with very limited 
congressional scrutiny, of course.
  In the coming era, when technology and creativity will be more 
important than ever to determine America's future, we are, through H.R. 
3460, decoupling the protection of patent rights from our Government, 
cutting it off from congressional oversight and leaving our people in 
the hands of an autonomous board of unelected officials. Who will be on 
that board? Unelected officials representing Lord knows what special 
interests will be represented on that board. Foreign and domestic 
special interests. These people will be making determinations as to who 
owns America's technology; basically determining our well-being in the 
future, which depends on America's leadership in technology.

  The Steal American Technologies Act, H.R. 3460, which will be coming 
to a vote here in Congress next week, must be defeated. And my 
substitute, the Rohrabacher substitute, should take its place, which is 
basically the Patent Restoration Act. That is the choice our Members of 
Congress will have, H.R. 3460, the Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Bill or 
the Rohrabacher substitute.
  One might ask why has a bill as obviously detrimental to America's 
interest gone so far as it has? First and foremost our big businesses 
have been bought off, or they have bought off, excuse me, on the idea 
of globalizing the world economy and harmonizing our patent rights as 
part of that deal of creating this new global economy, basically, even 
if our foreign competitors renege later.
  We are going to make sure we make these deals now to create the 
global economy, even if our competitors renege on the deals they are 
making right now. So we are going to change the law now, the patent law 
and other things, to create the global marketplace, and that is going 
to be a sign of good faith so that these foreigners that are making 
deals with us for our global economy will not go back on their word.
  Huge foreign and domestic and multinational corporations have been 
visiting individual Members and lobbying hard, spending loads of money, 
buying their influence peddlers around town.

[[Page H6505]]

And sometimes those influence peddlers look just like former Members of 
Congress, interestingly enough. And that is a big factor of why this 
thing is sliding through Congress.
  Second, the Members of Congress hear from the biggest companies in 
their district, and it makes a difference if the biggest company in 
your district comes to you. You do not say, well, you do not represent 
the interest of the people as a whole; you do not even represent the 
interest of our employees. They do not say that. They listen to what 
that big boss in that company has to say.
  These big company executives with the dreams of a global market 
dancing through their corporate heads basically have no, absolutely no 
commitment to the rights and the well-being of the American people 
because they are secondary to this great dream. If somebody has a dream 
to renew the world, watch out, brother. Whether it is a Communist or 
anybody else, if they are going to redo and make this world into a 
nirvana, watch out.
  In this case they are going to create a new global marketplace, and 
in the process, what is going to happen? If in order to accomplish this 
they have to cut deals to bring down the rights and standard of living 
of the American people, so he is equal to other people's rights, well, 
they are willing to do it. We cannot allow that to happen.
  Finally, there is another factor. Two Members of Congress pushing 
H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act, these two Members are 
retiring from Congress. Mr. Moorhead and Mrs. Schroeder are asking 
Members to support their bill because it is their swan song. Carlos 
Moorhead has worked long and hard here and he is a good man. Mrs. 
Schroeder has worked long and hard, and I am sure many people agree 
with her basic philosophy. Well, they are asking others to basically, 
well, even if you do not agree with us, vote for it because it is our 
swan song. Do it as a favor to us, as a tribute to our many years of 
service.

                              {time}  2215

  That is true. They want people to vote in that way to do them a 
favor, voting for legislation that will determine America's economic 
competitiveness and the standard of living of our people for decades to 
come.
  After the subcommittee markup of this bill, most of the Members I 
spoke to did not even know that H.R. 3460 mandates the publication of 
all patents issued or not, whether those patents have been issued or 
not after 18 months. They did not know that the bill obliterates the 
patent office and corporatizes it, stripping away any Civil Service 
protection from the patent examiners and limiting congressional 
oversight.
  The people on the committees did not even know this. I talked to them 
and they were oblivious to it. They knew they were giving Carlos 
Moorhead and Pat Schroeder their swan song, the last big piece of 
legislation that they wanted. We cannot permit this unsavory tactic to 
succeed, as much as we all admire in our respective parties Carlos 
Moorhead and Pat Schroeder, and we do admire them, they have worked 
long and hard here for the things they believe in, the votes on this 
issue are as vital to America's futures as anything I can--I have never 
seen anything that is more important than this coming through this 
body.
  We cannot vote on something so important to America's future as a 
part of a tribute to someone in their last year of office. If they want 
a swan song, give them a commemorative coin, but do not destroy 
America's technological advantage. The swan song argument is nothing 
less than no argument at all. They have not been arguing at all. They 
have been using the pressure of huge corporations who have no loyalty 
to the well-being of the American people and no loyalty to the values 
that we talk about overseas.
  This battle will determine, this battle that we are in will determine 
if America remains the number one technological power in the world, and 
these huge corporations are in talking to every Member of Congress. The 
only argument that the authors of this are giving is, please pay us a 
tribute. They are going to, one way or the other, Members are getting 
hammered on this. This is the ultimate, when we really look at it, the 
ultimate little guy versus big guy fight. Standing for the Rohrabacher 
substitute and a strong American patent system is a coalition that 
includes the NFIB, small business organizations and every 
inventors association in the country is supporting the Rohrabacher 
substitute.

  Over 50 top research universities and colleges nationwide who rely on 
patent income to bolster their research programs are supporting my 
substitute, including Harvard, MIT, the University of Florida, LSU, 
Columbia, Northwestern, the University of Wisconsin. Also strongly 
supporting the Rohrabacher substitute for H.R. 3460 is Patent Office 
union, these men and women who struggle and work so hard to try to be 
diligent in their work who are going to find their entire civil service 
protection stripped from them.
  On the other side is just about every big business organization you 
can imagine. With interlocking directorates and foreign ownership, no 
one can be sure how much foreign and multinational influence is being 
exerted on this issue. But it is considerable.
  Who will win? It is up to the people. Members of Congress need to be 
personally contacted. H.R. 3460, the Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act, 
which I call the Steal American Technologies Act, must be defeated and 
the Rohrabacher substitute put in its place. This vote could well come 
to the floor early next week.
  Anyone who needs more information, by the way, interestingly enough, 
if someone wants to read the bill in fact for themselves, they can. It 
is available on the Internet. The terrible details are there for the 
American people to see. If someone has got a home computer, they can 
get it on the Internet and take the time, if they want to take the 
time, to go and do this and to download the information and see it for 
themselves.
  They actually, they can actually go to their internet computer and 
get the copies of the bills and try to decide for themselves. It is 
available at WWW dot House dot gov and then slash Rohrabacher. That is 
R-o-h-r-a-b-a-c-h-e-r. Here is the internet information again: www dot 
house dot gov slash Rohrabacher.
  So this decision that we are about to make in this body will 
determine the well-being of our people, the standard of living of every 
American. It will determine the competitiveness of the United States of 
America and it will determine our future.
  Is the United States going to be a shining city on the hill, a 
shining city of innovation and progress, sparkling there, or a 
backwater subservient to the dictates of a global elite? A land of 
free, prosperous people looking to the future, or a Nation looking back 
and wondering why and how we lost our edge in the world?

  Together we can make democracy work. H.R. 3460, the Steal American 
Technologies Act, can be defeated and our rights to the best technology 
in the world and to make sure America is the technological leader in 
the world can be restored by the Rohrabacher substitute. It is now time 
for people to become part of the democratic process. Those people who 
are trying insidiously to change the law in a way that would, 10 years 
down the road, be a sneak attack on the well-being of our people, they 
are basically confident that they are going to win because they think 
this issue, the patent issue, that people are going to yawn or they 
will not be able to understand it or will not be able to understand 
just what is going on here. They are thinking this is going to slide 
through Congress because they have got these big corporate heads 
calling on Members of Congress.
  Unless we take the power in our own hands and participate in the 
system, which is what our Founding Fathers wanted us to do, I believe 
that Thomas Jefferson today would be so proud that internet is being 
used to give people the actual wording of the bills that are being 
considered here on the floor of the House of Representatives. Thomas 
Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, they would say, that is exactly the kind 
of society we had in mind because we knew America would not be perfect. 
The Founding Fathers knew there would be special interests working in 
our country, but they knew and they trusted in the free people of this 
country to get involved.
  Let us make sure we do get involved. Let us make sure that Ben 
Franklin

[[Page H6506]]

and Thomas Jefferson, who are looking down on us today, will know that 
we have picked up the torch because we are, after all, the children of 
Thomas Jefferson. We will not give up our rights, and we will fight for 
this democratic process.
  I would invite all of my colleagues to join me in this effort to 
ensure that the American people's right to a decent standard of living, 
to freedom beyond anywhere else in the world, that that right, those 
rights are protected.

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