[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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