[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 27 (Wednesday, March 5, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H742-H743]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         AMERICA'S TECHNOLOGICAL SECRETS SHOULD BE SAFEGUARDED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today H.R. 400 passed through the 
Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property of the Committee on 
the Judiciary. H.R. 400, what I call the Steal American Technologies 
Act, is disguised as a patent reform bill.
  This bill was first entitled, when it was first introduced last year, 
the Patent Publication Act. Well, people might ask themselves, how does 
the Patent Publication Act all of a sudden become a patent reform bill? 
Well, that is because the patent reform bill is a title that does not 
describe exactly what is going on in the bill, but the Patent 
Publication Act does.
  This bill has not changed a bit. The purpose of the bill is exactly 
the same. Now, hold on to your hats, make sure you understand the 
magnitude of what is about to be said.
  This bill, H.R. 400, which I call the Steal American Technologies 
Act, mandates that after 18 months, if an inventor in the United States 
applies for a patent, even if his patent has not been issued, after 18 
months it is mandated that all the details of his patent will be 
published for everybody in the world to see and to steal. That is it. 
Every one of America's technological secrets will be mandated to be 
published so that those adversaries in Japan or in China or anywhere 
else in the world will have all the details and probably be able to go 
into production and use our intellectual property, all of our new ideas 
and technological discoveries against the United States of America.
  That is why I call this the Steal American Technologies Act. It is 
beyond belief that this is going through the House of Representatives, 
but it will be on this floor unless the American people call their 
Congressman or Congresswoman to let them know how heinous it is to 
permit our adversaries to steal our technology and use it against us.
  This is exactly what is going to happen, because the huge 
multinational corporations who would benefit from stealing our 
technology and not having to pay royalties are in an unholy alliance 
with our own big companies who do not want to pay royalties to American 
inventors.
  The idea of course is, oh, it is going to happen anyway. These things 
would have been invented. You put an infinite number of inventors in a 
room with an infinite number of typewriters and eventually everything 
will be invented. No. We have had a strong and prosperous country 
because we have had the strongest patent protection of any country of 
the world. Now they are trying to change that, because they are taking 
away the confidentiality of American inventors, they are taking away 
our rights to a guaranteed patent term, and this H.R. 400 also 
obliterates the Patent Office.

                              {time}  1415

  That is right, Mr. Speaker. What this does, H.R. 400, the Steal 
American Technologies Act also would take the Patent Office, which is 
written into the Constitution, and resurrect it. As what? A 
corporatized entity.
  Our patent examiners are strong and faithful people, they work hard, 
and the reason they have been able to do a good job is because they 
have been government employees protected from outside influences. Now 
we are changing the entire rules of the game, just as America is 
entering into this new technological age.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a Pearl Harbor in slow motion. This is a 
catastrophe that will hit our country and destroy our standard of 
living that is based on America being the technological leader of the 
world, and the American people in the future will never know what hit 
them. They will just say, wait a minute; did we not used to be the 
leader in technology? Could we not out-compete all these countries? 
That is because we had strong patent protection, and our Founding 
Fathers knew that as long as Americans had this patent protection, we 
would have the ideas and creativity to save our country.
  I have a bill in opposition to the Steal American Technologies Act. 
My bill is H.R. 811, and there is a companion bill, H.R. 812. That is 
811 and 812, which would restore to the American people their 
guaranteed right that has been part of our rights as Americans since 
our Constitution was written, for a guaranteed patent term, that is 
being attacked today, will be taken away from them.
  My bill guarantees confidentiality, so when our inventors come up 
with new ideas, they are not going to go to our adversaries and be used 
against us. There is not going to be a line at the Patent Office for a 
copying machine, and a line over to the fax machine, and get it 
overseas as soon as possible.
  H.R. 812, the companion bill introduced by the gentleman from 
California, Duncan Hunter, will maintain in

[[Page H743]]

the U.S. Government a strong Patent Office and an efficient Patent 
Office to protect us and to make sure that our people are serviced 
well, which is a function, a proper function of Government.
  This is an attempt to harmonize our law, and those who support H.R. 
400 will tell us that we need to harmonize our law with the rest of the 
world. No, we need to strengthen the protections of the American 
people.
  I ask for the support of my colleagues for H.R. 811 and 812 in 
opposition to H.R. 400.

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