[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 21 (Tuesday, February 25, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H620-H624]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
INTRODUCTION OF LEGISLATION TO RESTORE PATENT RIGHTS TO THE AMERICAN
PEOPLE
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gibbons). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from California [Mr.
Rohrabacher] is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today I have submitted to Congress
legislation which will restore to the American people the patent rights
that have been protected by law in our country since the ratification
of our Constitution.
Now, I say restore to the American people because unbeknownst to our
population, and I might say unbeknownst to many Members of Congress,
over these last few years our patent rights have been under attack and
that attack has already greatly diminished the patent protection, the
rights that our people have had in the area of intellectual property
rights for their inventions, to control their products and their
genius, the protection they have had since the founding of our country.
This has been, already, as I say, let me repeat, greatly diminished.
To be specific, we as a people have already lost our right to a
guaranteed patent term. Now, that may sound a bit innocuous, because
most Americans do not know what I am talking about. A guaranteed patent
term? Yes, Americans, from the founding of our country until just 2
years ago, had a right to a guaranteed term where they would control
and own their inventions. Every generation of Americans has been
confident that no matter how long after filing for a patent, no matter
how long it took the patent to be issued, the owner of the patent, once
it was issued, would have a guaranteed term of 17 years of ownership
from which to benefit from his or her invention.
Now, this may seem a bit obscure, it may seem a bit innocuous in
terms of why would someone be so concerned about this little part of
the law? Well, American investors and American inventors have had,
since our country's founding, the strongest protection of any people of
the world. That counts for something. And it does not just count for
the well-being of inventors and investors.
Now, some people believe the American miracle is a result of the vast
resources of the United States of America. They look at our oil and our
gold and our minerals and our lakes and our streams, and they look at
the trees, and they look at all of the vast expanses of territory and
say that must be the basis of America's well-being, of its economic
strength. Well, that is not the basis of our strength. What has given
us a higher standard of living and produced a country where opportunity
has been unlimited compared to other countries of the world is that we
produced more wealth than other societies. Thus, the wealth that we
produced pushed up the standard of living of the average person and
opened doors of opportunity never seen or even dreamed of before in
other countries.
We produced more wealth not because we worked harder. It is almost a
cliche to say that Americans work very hard. Well, I know many people
around the world who work very hard, and I know many nations around the
world who worked very hard throughout history and that got nowhere.
Their people did not benefit or profit. It was not an uplifting of the
human experience for them to work hard.
Our people worked hard but it was coupled with two things: It was
coupled with freedom, which was vitally important, but it was also
coupled with the fact that the United States was always on the cutting
edge of technology. The work of our people was magnified over and over
again by the fact that our people were using the best and the latest
equipment and technology to get their job done, which made our people
more productive and more competitive than the vast numbers of people
and the huge multitude of populations throughout the world who worked
just as hard and had just as much muscle and got up in the morning
perhaps even earlier than Americans. But that their labor was not
magnified by the technology that produced much more wealth per hour
worked.
Our Founding Fathers believed in this. They understood it. In fact,
they made sure that it was written into our Constitution. And the laws
that we passed concerning the ownership of technology was based on the
idea that if we encourage people to own the things that they developed,
that more things would be invented here and that the lifestyle of our
people would be improved by the genius of our people because people
would seek to create new inventions that would build the wealth and
raise the standard of living. We know that. We are very proud of that
as Americans.
In fact, one of the things Americans are most proud of is the fact
that we were the people who invented some of the most important
inventions in the history of mankind. Samuel Morris, who invented
the telegraph; Robert Fulton. These were not rich people who just
managed to buy their way into some invention. They were common ordinary
people that invented things that changed the world forever.
Thomas Edison. Here I sit under electric lights and I wonder what
this body must have done before there was electricity; how we were able
to function without electricity. Certainly how can we have a democracy
when we do not have the radio technology or the television technology
or the printing technology that permits the huge number of citizens to
participate in their open government?
Alexander Graham Bell; another person who came from great adversity
in order to invent something that changed the face of the planet and
has magnified the amount of wealth available to the common man beyond
anything that was ever believed before.
The Wright brothers. The Wrights' first flight down in North
Carolina, which I recently visited. These two young men who worked in a
bicycle shop, whose education was limited but whose imagination and
tenacity and intelligence was superior. They pushed and they pushed,
and they knew that if they had their invention, if they could conquer
the secrets that would lead mankind to flight, they would own that
technology for 17 years. They knew it would be their property. That is
the same with all the inventors I just mentioned.
Our technology laws brought us through cold wars and hot wars, it
brought us through times of great peril and it brought us through times
of great development in our Nation. We were the most undeveloped nation
of the world and we became an industrial power, and also a power in
which economic activity was so diversified and spread throughout the
population that all people of all backgrounds were able to have
opportunities that were never dreamed of, as I say, in other countries.
This was a result of our laws. It did not just happen. It did not
just happen. It happened because we had the strongest patent protection
of any country of the world and, thus, we benefited more than any
country of the world from the development of new technology and new
inventions.
Well, 3 years ago, I sadly say, a plan was put into motion to change
that fundamental protection that Americans enjoyed for so long. The
American inventor and the American investor, who before were certain
that they would have a guaranteed patent term no matter how long it
took them once they had applied for the patent, no matter how long it
took them to get that through the patent process after they had filed,
and Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison fought for decades at times
to try to get their patents through, they knew at the end of that time
there would be 17 years in which they would own their technology and be
able to benefit from it. Thus, the investors were able to come through
with the money that was necessary to do the work and the research
[[Page H621]]
necessary to change the condition of mankind.
In its little way the electric light, what a little way, it changed
mankind. Just that little electric light changed all of humankind
forever. That did not just happen. It took people to invest in research
facilities and to pay salaries and to make sure the job got done. But
they knew if they invested they would have 17 years of guaranteed
patent protection to get that money back.
Already, as I have stated, that right has been eliminated and,
actually, the patent protection offered by the law has been
significantly diminished. The American people do not even know that.
The guaranteed patent term, was quietly, almost secretly replaced by an
uncertain patent term.
Now, what is this uncertain patent term? It looks very innocuous.
What it says is 20 years from filing, when you file, 20 years later you
have no more patent protection. What that means is if it takes you 10
or 15 years to get your patent, which has been the case with major
breakthrough technologies, well, you just do not have any time left.
You do not benefit at all.
That was a tremendous change in our fundamental patent law, our
fundamental law of ownership of technology. As we enter an era of
technology and ideas and global competition, we have changed that
fundamental law that guided us through. Why did we do that? How did
they do that? That law was changed by putting in a small provision into
the GATT implementation legislation that most of the Members of this
Congress did not know was in that legislation.
{time} 1715
This fundamental change in our law that is so important to the
development of technology that will keep America strong, so our people
can have a higher standard of living and can beat the foreign
competition, that was just changed. It was put in there in the GATT
implementation legislation. This Congressman struggled to find out if
it would be included and was not told, it was kept secret from me until
the last minutes before the GATT was sent to this body as to whether or
not they were going to include this provision.
Interestingly enough, the provision I am talking about was not
required by GATT. To let someone know what GATT is, GATT is called the
General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs. What it was was an agreement
negotiated over a number of years between the countries of the world in
which they generally agreed to what the rules of the game of trading
would be.
Our Congress decided that we would give what we call fast track
authority to our Federal Government, to the President, to negotiate
with these other countries and fast track means that he can come back
and present us one piece of legislation that encompassed all the
understandings that they reached with the GATT implementation, or with
the GATT agreement. So this General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs
could be presented to us in one package and we would vote up or we
would vote down on that one package.
We gave away our rights to amend and to question this bill in parts
in exchange for an agreement that we would have 50 days to look at the
bill and that the only thing that would be put into this implementation
legislation would be that which was required by GATT itself. So if the
General Agreement on Trade and Tariff did not include the provision, it
was not to be put in. That was part of our agreement with the
administration.
Well, I am here to say today that this body, this Congress, was
betrayed by the executive branch and this provision, which was not
required by the GATT agreements, by the General Agreement on Trades and
Tariffs, it did not require this provision. This provision was quietly
put into place in hopes that it would just flow right on by and the
American inventor and investor and, in the long run, the American
people would never know what hit them.
Furthermore, of course, if you remember, the GATT implementation
legislation was given us just like a few days before we were to
adjourn. We would not even have the 50 days that were required of us,
and we raised such a stink that a special session was called for us to
vote on GATT. It was a lame duck session. But even then it was admitted
to me that this provision was not required, but that if I agreed to
just go along with it, if our people would vote for it, that they would
have a chance to correct it later on.
So our right of a guaranteed patent term has already been eliminated.
It has been eliminated. It is gone. It is replaced by this 20 years
from filing, which means you have no guaranteed term and if it takes
you 10 years to get your patent or 15 years, so what. And basically it
is gone. It has happened. Why am I bringing it up, then, if it has
already happened?
We are bringing it up because we are trying to restore that right to
the American people and that is part of the legislation I have
introduced today. But one might ask themselves, why is it that that law
was changed in the first place? Who was behind this? What motivated
people to want to change this guaranteed patent or eliminate it when it
had done so much to benefit the American people? When as the greatest
innovators and inventors in the world, we had so much to be proud of
and that has to have something to do with our patent laws, who would
want to change the law then? Who the heck would make this effort to
sort of maneuver this thing through the system like that?
I am submitting for the Record a copy of an agreement that I have in
my hands. It is a copy of an agreement between Bruce Lehman, who was
the head of the American Patent Office, and his Japanese counterpart,
in which Bruce Lehman agrees to, quote, harmonize, end of quote,
American law with that of Japan. This is dated 3 years ago. He is going
to harmonize American law with Japan.
Well, let us look at what harmonize means. If we have the strongest
patent protection of the world, which is what gave us the strength to
outcompete our opposition, and Japan had a weaker system, do you think
that I would be up here today if the agreement was being implemented by
bringing the Japanese system and making it stronger protection for
their citizens, so that Japan now had stronger protection for their own
citizens? I would not be complaining about that. Why I am here today is
because Bruce Lehman, the head of our Patent Office, and those people
he has mobilized in the American Government and those people who are
lobbying this bill, this issue, through the United States Congress have
decided that harmonization of patent law means that the strongest
patent protection of the world, of the United States of America, will
be harmonized by bringing it down to the level of Japan.
Does that not make everyone feel nice and comfy, that our rights now
are going to be diminished in order to make them the same as the
Japanese? The Japanese of course are well-known for their creativity.
They are well-known for all of their inventions. They are well-known
for the innovations that have made their country the leader, in which
everyone wants to copy.
What? What? No way. The Japanese are known, yes, as hard-working
people. The Japanese are known basically as honest people. But they are
not innovators. They are not inventors. They are not creative thinkers.
In fact, they are just the opposite. They are people who do not invent
things. They are people who copy things.
One of the reasons why they copy things and they do not invent things
in Japan is because they have had a patent system which is like the one
that we now have had foisted upon us. They have had the 20 years.
What it is, they have a system that the inventor files and after 20
years the inventor no longer has any more property rights. No matter if
it takes 15 or 18 years to get something through the system, the
inventor, he or she, could lose all of their patent rights, but after
20 years they have got no more rights, in total contradiction and
contrary to the American system which has been a guaranteed patent term
of 17 years.
So in Japan, how has it served their people? If someone comes up with
a new idea, they file for a patent, and within a short period of time
they are surrounded by powerful economic interests who beat them into
submission and destroy their incentive to invent and take away what
they have created and use it for their own benefit. These economic
thugs in Japan will not countenance any type of threat by some creative
inventor.
[[Page H622]]
In the United States we herald our creative thinkers. We think they
are wonderful. We understand the value they are to our society. Now, we
have changed our system to replicate that of Japan. What is going on
here? And especially you must think about what is going on here when
you realize by changing our law, we are permitting those same economic
thugs in Japan to do the same thing to American inventors that they
have been doing to their own people. This is an absolute outrage. Yet
it has happened very quietly. Not many people have noticed. You might
say it is a Pearl Harbor in slow motion. Years from now, people will
not even know why the United States seems to be lagging behind when we
were always up front. No, that is not what we are going to let happen.
The bill I dropped today will, first and foremost, restore to the
United States and to the people of the United States a guaranteed
patent term. A guaranteed patent term. I would hope that my colleagues
will join me in cosponsoring and voting for and supporting vocally and
otherwise my legislation. Thirty-eight of my colleagues have already
joined me in cosponsoring this bill, to restore to the American people
this right that was given up as part of a promise made to the head of
the Japanese patent office, for Pete's sake.
And what else is going on? What else was in this agreement? I think
it is fascinating for us to look at the agreement. The first part of
the agreement is for us to change our patent law so that we no longer
have a guaranteed patent term. That is gone, and now I am trying to
restore it. But the second part of this is they want us to agree, and
the head of our Patent Office has agreed to do this, to publish every
detail of American patent applications so the whole world can see every
one of our technological secrets and new ideas 18 months after the
application has been filed, whether or not the patent has been issued.
What does that mean? That means that every one of our inventors who
files, even if he has not had the patent issued to him, every thief and
copycat on the entire planet will know every detail. Now if you think
that is too outrageous to believe, no one would be dumb enough, no one
would ever be dumb enough to do this, maybe some official would be dumb
enough to do that. You know, some official, they might just sign away
and try never to implement this. It is like the Japanese. They make an
agreement, then they wait for you to do everything you have agreed to
and then they may or may not follow through on what they have agreed
to. No, we would not be that stupid.
Well, there is a bill now before Congress, H.R. 400, which will be
going through the Intellectual Property Rights Committee of Judiciary
tomorrow. That bill, surprise, surprise, is the second shoe falling on
this agreement. They have eliminated the guaranteed patent term. Now
they want to, what? Publish all the inventors' applications in 18
months whether or not the patent has been issued. There is a piece of
legislation, I call it the Steal American Technologies Act. They have
submitted the bill, and it is being pushed through the process right
now, right now as we speak. Tomorrow there is going to be a hearing,
and I will be speaking about it at the hearing. I believe, and I do not
think it takes anyone with a superior intelligence to realize, this is
a giveaway of America's standard of living to the people who would
cheat and steal and lie and copy all of our ideas.
There was a man involved in the solar energy industry last year when
a similar bill was being pushed through the system, and when I told him
about this provision, his face reddened, he clenched his fists and he
said, Congressman, let me tell you what will happen if this becomes
law. When I apply for a patent, my Japanese and Chinese competitors
will have the information about my inventions even before I have my
patent issued. They will be in production, they will be making money,
and they will use that money that they have made on my inventions to
destroy me economically. There will be nothing I can do to fight it.
They will use money made from my invention to hire their lawyers to
prevent me from having those property rights. This is what we are
condemning our own business to by passing the Steal American
Technologies Act, H.R. 400.
The bill that I submitted today, in direct contrast to H.R. 400,
reconfirms the right of Americans, which has been another right
American inventors have had, the right of confidentiality; that when an
inventor steps forward and files for a patent, that that inventor has
been guaranteed, by law, that his information will be kept secret and,
if it is revealed, criminal penalties can be filed against those people
who reveal that information. That has been the right of the American
inventor, until now. Those advocates of H.R. 400, the Steal American
Technologies Act, those advocates of this incredible agreement with the
Japanese, would have us eliminate the guaranteed patent term and,
number two, eliminate the right of confidentiality.
What will happen is those powerful interest groups overseas will know
exactly who is trying to get a patent for what. They will be here with
their lawyers pressuring people just like they do in their own country.
What makes anybody think our people will be able to stand up to this
type of beating and this type of coercion any more than the people of
those countries have been able to stand up to their economic
oppressors?
{time} 1730
We are talking about countries that do not have the same idea of fair
play that we have in the United States of America, but what we are
trying to do now is give us the same legal protections, minor legal
protections that they have had, rather than the strong legal
protections we have had traditionally.
My bill, in contrast to H.R. 400, guarantees the patent term,
restores confidentiality. And finally, this bill, H.R. 400, which will
be discussed tomorrow in the Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual
Property of the Committee on the Judiciary, that bill does something
else. I just thought I would drop this idea in on everybody. How about
the idea of obliterating the entire patent system of the United States
of America? I mean people say, this Congressman is just way off base.
What is he talking about? Obliterating the patent system? Right. He is
just fooling us now.
No, H.R. 400 would eliminate the patent office as we know it and as
it has been in place in our country since the founding of our country.
Since the U.S. Constitution, we have had a patent office. Since the
U.S. Constitution, there have been patent rights for our people. And do
you know what? H.R. 400 would eliminate the patent office, and turn it
into what? Turn it into a corporatized entity. Corporatized? What does
it mean? Who is going to be in control of this corporation? Are
foreigners going to be allowed to be on the board of directors? What
are the rights of the people who work for the patent office, this new
corporatized entity? Who knows? Who knows?
Now if you have a bill that contains such nonsense as publishing our
secrets so that our adversaries are going to have every detail of our
new technology secrets, and that is in the bill, you got to wonder if
they have much more sense when they are talking about recorporatizing
this patent office.
Now, by the way, I happen to be a conservative Republican. I believe
in free enterprise, and I believe in limited government, and I believe
basically in privatization. People come up with privatization ideas,
and I am always all ears for that. But I would not think about
privatizing the court system, for Pete's sake. There are certain core
functions of government which our Founding Fathers wanted. We would not
want our judicial rights to be just put forth into some corporation
that we did not know who was going to run it.
You know part of this corporate power that they have got in H.R. 400
grants this new corporate entity the right to borrow money in which, by
the way, we taxpayers would be responsible to borrow money from the
Federal Treasury in order to build buildings and anything else they
want. We do not have the right to prevent that from happening.
I mean who is going to be in power and, by the way, what we have done
then is what? The patent examiners make decisions. We have had patent
[[Page H623]]
examiners for 200 years in our country's history. The patent examiners
have to make the judicial-like decisions as to who owns what. Well,
instead of being government employees with a protection of government
employees to prevent them from being influenced by the outside, under
the new corporate entity they will not have the same protections, they
will not have the patent, the patent examiners will not have the same
protections as they have had, so how do we know that they are going to
have the same diligence? How do we know that there would not be
pressure on them from the outside?
H.R. 400, the Steal American Technologies Act, puts America in
jeopardy. It puts the life-styles of our children in jeopardy because
our children 50 years from now, or the next generation or the
generation after that, can wake up and say: My goodness, did not
America used to be the technological leader? Something has happened.
Yes, something will have happened. It will have gone through in the
GATT implementation legislation. There will be, you know, little known
agreements made with the Japanese to make our system like theirs, and
all of a sudden we will be different, things will change.
Let me ask you this. If the Wright brothers would not have had the
protection that they had, and all of a sudden Mitsubishi showed up on
their doorstep and said, our lawyers are suing you for $10 million
because we have a patent that looks a little bit like yours, that in
fact we--certainly we filed it, and we got it before you were issued
yours, and we find out, of course, the Japanese got all the blueprints
because it was published 18 months after they filed, and that was
actually before they were issued the patent. So we have a huge company,
a foreign company on the doorstep of the Wright brothers.
Now, what difference does that make? Well, I will tell you if anybody
has any aerospace workers in their district, I will tell you what
difference it makes. It makes the difference of hundreds of thousands
of high-paying jobs in the United States of America today versus those
jobs in Japan. That is the difference it makes. It means a standard of
living for those people having decent lives, taking care of their
families, building the churches and the schools in our communities
versus not having those jobs because that technology now belongs to
Japan and we have to buy our technology from them.
These are the choices we are making now. It is economic surrender in
slow motion, and it is done by people who are very well-meaning, and
let me say that those people who are advocating this in Congress
basically are people who believe that the United States has to do its
part to form a global economy, and that is one of the driving forces
that we are talking about here today, the creation of a global economy.
These people believe that it is all right to diminish the rights of the
American people in order to achieve a global marketplace that will
benefit all of mankind, including the American people.
Well, that is something, that is a motivating force that moves people
along; and I strongly, strongly disagree with those who promote that
concept. Many times they will not come right out and tell you, but that
is what it is all about, the globalization. They call it harmonization
with Japan, and really it is globalization.
Now, there is all kinds of things that we will be told, that actually
our motive is to solve this or that problem. No.
After a year and a half of hard work last year, I happened to be on
the floor when Congresswoman Pat Schroeder was on the floor, and I gave
a speech similar to this speech about patent rights, and she was aghast
because I was saying how bad it would be and what bad results it will
have, and after a year of having the people advocating this bill
claiming that the real purpose was to correct this or that problem;
they call it submarine patenting, is a problem they claim to want to
solve which in fact is nothing but a front, nothing but a front in
order to basically advocate something that is going to have some very
strong results in another area and submarine patent problem can easily
be solved, and it is a minor problem that can easily be solved, but
they were saying that was the real purpose why we have to destroy the
whole system.
Well, in fact Mrs. Schroeder, who was not ready for a debate, just
came right out and said what her real intent was. That bill, H.R. 3460,
the Moorhead-Schroeder bill, which is their H.R. 400 last year, is
about making our patent office uniform with both the one in Europe and
the one in Japan. She came right out and said it. That is the first
time anyone did come out and say it because that had not been the party
line up until that point. But no matter what people give you as their
reasoning, there are very detrimental things that are going to result
from changing the fundamental patent rights of the American people.
The multinational corporations whose loyalty is I do not know where,
are solidly behind H.R. 400 because they want to create the global
marketplace, even if it means that American people are going to suffer.
My bill, which I turned in today, the legislation I turned in today,
puts the rights of the American people first. We should not think about
harmonizing our law with other countries by diminishing the rights of
our people. I do not care if it is freedom of speech or freedom of
religion or whatever it is.
This will be a hard-fought issue in Congress. Basically major
universities, capital--and basically people who invest in new
inventions, the venture capitalists and the small inventors are working
with me on legislation, on my legislation, to make sure the rights of
the American people are restored and protected and that the patent
office remains an efficient and well run part of the U.S. Government
and that those people, those patent examiners, are protected from
outside influences and are guaranteed their civil service protections.
On the other hand, you have people in the electronics industry who
basically do not believe--they think that things are moving so fast
anymore, the patent system has just become a big pain, and they do not
really like it anymore, and they are stealing from each other right and
left, and the American electronics industry is doing everything they
can to eliminate the guaranteed patent term, and those are the major
big companies that are supporting H.R. 400. There are also some major
biotech companies that are supporting my legislation, like Amgem and
some biotech companies on the other side that have felt the pressure
from international corporations in other countries.
We have some people on the other side who honestly believe, as I say,
in globalization. These major corporations basically believe that if we
have a global economy, they will be able to do business. Our
universities, our inventors and our venture capitalists are on the
other side of this battle. It will be fought and it will be fierce.
The factor that will make the difference is whether or not the
American people get involved themselves. If it is left up to the
lobbyists who are hired by the international corporations and by other
countries, the lobbyists that flood through these halls in order to try
to push Congress in one direction or the other, the American people
will see this right diminished, and they will see other rights in the
near future and in the time ahead will also be jeopardized if they do
not get involved.
But Congress is still listening to the American people. The American
people need to have their opinion on a strong patent system. They need
to know, the Congressmen need to know, that they should support the
Rohrabacher patent bill, the Patent Restoration Act, and oppose the
Steal American Technologies Act, H.R. 400. If the American people speak
up, their voice will be heard louder and more clearly than those of the
paid lobbyists. But if people do not contact their Congressmen, this
issue will be lost, and future generations will never know what hit
them. They will never know that for 200 years America had the strongest
patent protection in the world and we were the technological leaders of
the world and then somebody sort of changed the rules of the game, a
change that we did not even notice was going on, and slowly but surely
we were no longer the technological leaders of the world and America
was not No. 1, but America began to decline.
Is that not what happened? I can hear people saying it right now. I
can hear our grandchildren and their children
[[Page H624]]
saying: Did we not used to invent everything? Did not that give America
the leverage we needed? Why is it that our standard of living was going
down when it was always going up before?
Changing these laws will have dramatic consequences. We cannot expect
this Congress just to come to this decision on its own because the
lobbyists will be pushing in the wrong direction. The American people
must--their voice must be heard. H.R. 400, the Steal American
Technologies Act, must be eliminated, it must be defeated, and the
Patent Term Restoration Act, my bill, Congressman Rohrabacher's bill,
should pass, and if we do, we can sit and have faith in the future
again because we can sit back and know we did our part to ensure that
the legal structure which served our country so well for 200 years was
maintained and that when there was a brutal attack on that legal
structure, we stepped forward to beat back the assault and to protect
future generations from loss.
Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in sponsoring my piece of
legislation, the Patent Term Restoration Act, and to defeat H.R. 400,
the Steal American Technologies Act.
Mutual Understanding Between the Japanese Patent Office and the United
States Patent and Trademark Office
Actions to be taken by Japan:
1. By July 1, 1995, the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) will
permit foreign nationals to fine patent applications in the
English language, with a translation into Japanese to follow
within two months.
2. Prior to the grant of a patent, the JPO will permit the
correction of translation errors up to the time allowed for
the reply to the first substantive communication from the
JPO.
3. After the grant of a patent, the JPO will permit the
correction of translation errors to the extent that the
correction does not substantially extend the scope of
protection.
4. Appropriate fees may be charged by the JPO for the above
procedures.
Actions to be taken by the U.S.:
1. By June 1, 1994, the United States Patent and Trademark
Office (USPTO) will introduce legislation to amend U.S.
patent law to change the term of patents from 17 years from
the date of grant of a patent for an invention to 20 years
from the date of filing of the first complete application.
2. The legislation that the USPTO will introduce shall take
effect six months from the date of enactment and shall apply
to all applications filed in the United States thereafter.
3. Paragraph 2 requires that the term of all continuing
applications (continuations, continuations-in-part and
divisionals), filed six months after enactment of the above
legislation, be counted from the filing date of the earliest-
filed of any applications invoked under 35 U.S.C. 120.
Wataru Asou,
Commissioner, Japanese Patent Office.
Bruce A. Lehman,
Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Commissioner of Patents
and Trademarks, United States Patent and Trademark Office.
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