[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 41 (Wednesday, April 9, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H1371-H1374]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               AMERICA'S TECHNOLOGICAL EDGE IS IN DANGER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaHood). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Rohrabacher] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the 
majority leader.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, on Thursday of next week on this floor 
will be a debate which will actually end in a decisive vote for the 
future of the United States of America. Unfortunately, the vast 
majority of all Americans have no idea that there is even a piece of 
legislation like that which will be debated in one week on this floor 
even working its way through the system.
  There has been a blanket, overall coverup on this issue in what would 
be called the traditional media of the United States of America. The 
networks and the major newspapers have not touched this issue because 
they do not want the American people to know that a major decision 
affecting their way of life, the standard of living of their children, 
America's competitiveness, and the economic well-being and the national 
security of our country will be at stake with one vote. That is because 
this issue is relatively hard to understand, yet it is so vital that if 
the vote goes the other way, I believe this will be the first step on 
an escalator down for the people of the United States of America, 
because it will be ending and eliminating the greatest advantage that 
we have had as a country, and that is our technological edge over our 
competitors.
  The American people enjoy a high standard of living, not because we 
work harder than other people. People all over the world, many of them 
work longer hours; they are hard-working people, but yet they live in 
poverty. They have standards of living that we would never accept in 
the United States of America for even our poorest person.
  What gives us as Americans the edge? What ensures us the fact that we 
have wealth that is created in our country that can uplift the standard 
of the average person? It has been the technology that our citizens 
have developed and produced and invented over the history of our 
country.
  America has been a nation of yes, hard-working people, but there are 
hard-working people everywhere. Most importantly, we have been a nation 
of technology which has permitted our people to increase their standard 
of living, to live high and above the rest of the people of the world. 
Even at a time when there is international competition with countries 
where the people earn far less wages, we can out-compete them and we 
can look forward to a bright future, if we have the technological edge.
  But what is happening here next Thursday is a vote on the fundamental 
protections of law for American innovators, for American inventors, and 
for the owners and developers of new technology.
  We have had basically the same law in the United States of America 
for 200 years. Again, most people do not fully comprehend that this has 
been a protection granted to Americans that is different in other 
countries that has enabled our country to produce this higher standard 
of living and this great opportunity for the average person. They do 
not recognize that because it is little known that written into our 
Constitution by our Founding Fathers is a patent office and protection 
for inventors. That is why the inventors were in the United States of 
America. That is why the great creators of that technology that 
produced all of the wealth that enabled us to live better, that is why 
they were Americans.
  People came here from all over the world. Americans do not have any 
special trait. We just have freedom and opportunity and a legal system 
set down by our Founding Fathers that understood the necessity of 
individual freedom and individual rights being respected in order for 
the whole of the American people to progress.

                              {time}  1430

  And now we are changing the fundamental law in a very hushed manner 
so very few people know about it, the fundamental law that directs and 
protects the development of technology in the United States of America.
  Next Thursday, on this floor, on April 17, will be a vote in which 
two bills will come head to head, one bill H.R. 400 and the other H.R. 
811. It is a combination of H.R. 811 and H.R. 812.
  H.R. 400, which I call the Steal American Technologies Act, will, if 
passed, open up the United States to the greatest theft of our 
intellectual property and our technological achievements in the history 
of our Republic.
  It will be the equivalent of sending a message to everyone in the 
world to come and get our technological secrets and use them against 
the American people. It is as bad as that. That is H.R. 400.
  That bill, what does it do? No. 1, and hold on to your seats for 
those of my colleagues who do not understand what is going to happen on 
this floor in 1 week, this is a bill that will mandate that every 
inventor in the United States who applies for a patent will have his or 
her patent published for the world to see after 18 months even if that 
patent has not been issued.
  Now, what does this mean? From the history of our country, from the 
very beginning of our history, when someone has applied for a patent, 
when an American has applied for a patent, he or she has had the right 
of confidentiality, knowing that none of that information would be 
disclosed unless that patent was issued; and when the patent is issued, 
that means that person, that individual owns that technology. That has 
been a right for every American.
  And what is happening now? Next Thursday we will vote to discard that 
right, that no longer, after 225 years of American history, that right, 
which has been a force for good in our society, will be discarded by a 
vote here on the floor of the House of Representatives because H.R. 400 
mandates the publication of all of our secrets.
  There will be no more industrial espionage. You heard about that. You 
have heard about people coming into the United States in order to steal 
our secrets. There will be no more industrial espionage because after 
18 months, every bit of secret information about the development of our 
new technology will be sent to our worst enemies, people who want to 
destroy our country, people who want to destroy the American way of 
life, people who care not one iota for the standard of living for our 
people but want to pull those millions and billions of dollars of 
wealth into their pockets rather than see the American people enjoy the 
fruits of our free society.
  This is almost unbelievable. It is almost beyond belief, until you 
hear people stand up and argue this case as if, oh, this is going to be 
good because everybody will know what is being developed and then we 
can all work together. All work together.
  There are people in this world who are intent on not working together 
and they will be very happy to steal everything that America develops.
  The second provision on H.R. 400, which will be on this floor in a 
week, is called reexamination. The publication angle of H.R. 400 is 
enough, is enough for us to say get rid of this terrible threat to the 
American people. But that is a future threat, I might add. Publication 
only affects the future technologies.
  What we have discovered when looking into H.R. 400, and I did not 
know

[[Page H1372]]

this until several weeks ago, there are small provisions in this bill 
which open up the door to reexamination, which is the No. 2 provision, 
reexamination.
  What does reexamination mean? That means now, today, and all through 
our country's history, when you are issued your patent, it is your 
patent and there is almost nothing someone can do to challenge your 
right because it is your property. It has been decided upon and perhaps 
only one other criteria can be used to fight against it in court.
  Instead, H.R. 400 opens up a panoply of options for not only our big 
corporations but foreign corporations and multinational corporations to 
go at and challenge every one of our existing patents, not only are 
future patents going to be published before they are even issued, so 
that thieves can take away our future technology, the current 
technology that we have that gives us billions of dollars in royalties 
that comes to the United States every year. These foreign corporations 
that are paying royalties now will have the option, instead of paying 
royalties, to file suit and to interfere and to act and to call for 
reexamination of current patents.
  Finally, the last and perhaps another just as equally important 
provision of H.R. 400, the Steal American Technologies Act, which will 
be voted on in this body on the floor of the House in 1 week, is that 
it, again, hold on to your seats, it will obliterate the Patent Office.
  That is right. The Patent Office is written into the U.S. 
Constitution, and it eliminates it as a Government entity and 
resurrects it. Resurrects it as what? A corporatized entity. 
Corporatized.
  What does that mean? That means there will be some entity that used 
to be the Patent Office and now it will be corporatized, something like 
the Post Office, Government but not Government.
  This bill mandates, for example, that this new corporate structure 
will have business leaders on its board of directors. Now, what does 
that mean? I thought the business leaders were the ones who were going 
to be dealing with the patents. We are going to put the people who 
actually make money dealing with patents on the commanding board of 
directors of this company?
  The board is also enabled to borrow money and the taxpayers are still 
on the hook. Patent examiners have been shielded for 200 years from 
outside influences. Patent examiners have never had a scandal. These 
hardworking public servants, like judges, have such power in their 
hands to determine who owns billions of dollars of wealth, but they 
have been shielded up until now from outside influences. Will they be 
shielded? Will they be shielded from this new corporate entity?
  Let me add, there is one other thing I forgot to mention; the new 
corporate entity, according to H.R. 400, will be permitted to accept 
gifts. Accept gifts from corporations? Accept gifts from foreign 
companies? Accept gifts when they are making determinations about who 
owns what wealth in the future? What kind of effect will this have on 
the decisionmaking at this new corporatized Patent Office?
  Mr. Speaker, this is a formula for catastrophe. This is a formula for 
the destruction of the American way of life, and I cannot stress it too 
strongly here, it is going to be voted on and the American people do 
not know about it. It is coming next week. There has been a lid placed 
on coverage in the mass media. We do not have shows on the network or 
in our major newspapers. They are not doing stories about this threat 
to each and every one of us. It is not there.

  I have a piece of legislation, and the gentleman from California, 
Duncan Hunter has a companion piece of legislation, H.R. 811 and 812, 
that go in exactly the opposite direction from the bill, from H.R. 400, 
the one I just described.
  H.R. 811 is the Patent Term Restoration Act, which I have authored. 
Basically it restores a guaranteed patent term to the American people. 
If no one understands why we have to restore a guaranteed patent term, 
I hate to inform them, but we have already lost our right that has been 
with us since the founding of our country.
  Our people have always had a right when they apply for a patent, no 
matter how long it takes for that patent to be issued, that there is 
still a guaranteed time period, 17 years, when someone would reap the 
benefit from that invention, either the investor or inventor, whoever 
owns that patent. That was taken away. That was eliminated by a 
provision that was snuck, and I repeat, snuck, into the GATT 
implementation legislation.
  GATT 3 years ago did not require us to change our patent laws, but 
someone put that provision into GATT, and thus the Congress was faced 
with voting against the entire world trading system or agreeing to this 
fundamental change in patent law. This was a betrayal of the American 
people in the worst way. My bill restores the guaranteed patent term. 
So no matter how long it takes to issue your patent, no matter who is 
against you, once that patent is issued the American has a right to a 
guaranteed patent term of 17 years.
  By the way, it was replaced with something that sounds pretty 
innocuous, like many of the things in these bills sound innocuous. The 
provision that replaced our patent term guarantee was a provision that 
said you are going to have patent protection from 20 years from the 
date that you filed. However, however, 20 years, all it really means is 
the clock is ticking against the inventor. If it takes 10 to 15 years 
to get an invention patented, for the patent to issue, that patent 
applicant basically has lost all of that time. All of that time.
  No, we do not need the clock ticking against the inventor, we need a 
guaranteed patent term, which has been our right. That is what my bill 
does. The companion bill, H.R. 812, bolsters and strengthens and makes 
more productive and reforms the Patent Office and strengthens our 
Patent Office, instead of obliterating it like they do and 
corporatizing it, in H.R. 400.
  These bills will come to a direct head-on-head vote. My bill will be 
offered as a substitute. H.R. 811, strengthening the patent system, 
will come right up against it and there will be one vote.
  Right now there is an army of lobbyists going through this town 
contacting Members of Congress because they are interested in how they 
are going to vote. Unless the American people, unless the American 
people contact their representative, the major influence on how this 
vote will turn out will be lobbyists that are paid for by huge 
multinational corporations, foreign corporations, and yes, even some, 
many, of our major domestic corporations who are in league with these 
multinationals.
  Mr. Speaker, we can turn this around if the American people do 
contact their elected representatives. That will make the difference.
  By the way, interestingly enough, how do we communicate if we cannot 
get the news media to cover the story? I have tried everything. I give 
these speeches. I even have a web site, www.house.gov/rohrabacher/. 
That is www.house.gov/rohrabacher/. I had to go to the web site. I have 
gone to talk radio. Thank goodness we have democracy on the air. Thank 
goodness we have Rush Limbaugh and Michael Reagan and others, because 
the regular media will not cover this story that is so vital to the 
future of our country.
  What coverage we have been able to get through these speeches on the 
floor, we have received letters, I have received letters and Members of 
Congress have received letters from all over the United States, from 
small inventors, people who are afraid.
  The two most recent letters my office received, one was from a 
gentleman who is conducting research into breast cancer. He has made 
some breakthroughs but he is afraid to try to patent his discoveries. 
He is afraid of that because with the new H.R. 400, that would mean it 
would be published for the whole world to see, and he would reap no 
benefit from it. He is afraid, whether he should disclose what he has 
invented.
  Another person who wrote my office is a person who has developed a 
new system of killing bugs. That may sound rather minimal to people, 
killing bugs. It is not minimal. We are pouring tons of pesticides into 
our environment every year, and this man has invented a new process 
that requires no chemicals, a new method of dealing with infestations 
of bugs in homes and in fields that would prevent us from being 
poisoned.

[[Page H1373]]

  But he is worried. He has spent a lot of money in trying to develop 
this new process. He does not know if he wants to make it public 
through the patent system, because if he applies for the patent they 
will disclose this, if H.R. 400 is passed, even before he gets his 
patent and people will steal his process.
  These are the letters coming to me: Breast cancer, things dealing 
with insecticides into our system. How is this going to affect our way 
of life? Can the Members not see just by those two examples? Who would 
have thought of those two examples before I said them? There are 
thousands of people all over this country who are inventing ways of 
making things better.

                              {time}  1445

  That is what Americans are all about. We are tinkerers. We are people 
who use our ingenuity. That is what Americans are all about. We are 
changing the fundamental law, and we are pulling the rug out from under 
them. We will make sure that the giant corporations in Japan and China 
and even our own giant corporations can steal from them. And when we do 
that, the American light of ingenuity will be put out. It will not go 
on. We have fostered, we have nurtured this creative genius among our 
people. If we change the rules in protecting their rights as 
individuals, that light will be put out and our standard of living will 
suffer.
  Colleges and universities are getting the word. Throughout the United 
States of America we have been receiving letters from colleges and 
university people. People who are involved with research programs all 
over our country are writing and saying: You mean everything that I 
have been working for will be disclosed to America's enemies if we file 
for a patent?
  Small inventors, small inventors throughout the country have joined 
together to try to fight this but they are an unorganized group of 
people, the most unorganizable group of people I have ever seen. That 
is what they are, they are individualists, men and women who come up 
with new ideas who are hard to organize. Thus the major corporations 
want to steal the profit of their genius. I will have more to say on 
this floor a week from now.
  Mr. Speaker, we have seen venture capitalists, people who put money 
into the inventors. All of the great inventions happen here in the 
United States of America: the light bulb, the telephone, the reaper, 
the telegraph, the airplane. We have had the great inventors. We have 
had the great inventors because investors have known that they would 
have 17 years of a guaranteed patent term to reap the reward.
  The Government did not finance the research into most of these great 
inventions. It was done by individual investors and individual 
inventors, and these were the people who made the great breakthroughs. 
But if we pull the rug out from under them and we make their inventions 
public even before the patent is issued, then what is going to happen? 
If we take away the guaranteed patent term, there will not be 
investment capital. They will come to people and say we have to tax you 
some more. We have to have a Government program to have research for 
our country because you cannot rely on the private sector. You cannot 
rely on the private sector because they change the rules of the game.
  Do we really want the Government picking out who is going to get all 
the research money? They are going to pick their friends. Politics and 
bureaucracy are going to come into play, as it was not part of the 
process over these last 200 years. We will become what the Soviet Union 
was. Do we know what that is? We will have changed the rules of the 
game. We will become a society aimed at collectivism versus protecting 
individual rights. This has been recognized.
  For example, the Long Island Association of Industries is a group of 
1,000 industries on Long Island who got wind of what was going on, read 
the legislation and they are outraged. They are outraged that the big 
guys are setting up the little guys, and some of the big guys happen to 
be multinational and foreign corporations. Amgen, a biotech corporation 
out in California, large biotech corporation, has put billions of 
dollars into research. And then this is going to be made public before 
the patent is issued so that all over the world they could just take 
what has been discovered and use it?
  A solar energy company was in my office when this was breezing 
through the committee. Yes, H.R. 400 has already gone through 
committee. The solar energy company executive said to me: ``Mr. 
Congressman, if they pass this legislation and they publish my patent 
applications before I get issued the patent, my Japanese competitors 
will be in production of the things that I have invested in and spent 
millions of dollars to produce and develop and discover. And the 
Japanese will be producing it. And they will be selling it on the 
market. And they will use the profit from selling my technology to 
defeat me in court, these huge corporations.''
  Mr. Speaker, it makes no sense. H.R. 400 says, how are we going to 
protect these American inventors? You ask them, if you are going to 
publish it, their information, before they get the patent, how are they 
protected? And do you know what the answer is? Well, once the patent is 
issued, if someone is using their idea, they can sue them in court. We 
can imagine the Wright Brothers trying to sue Mitsubishi Corporation. 
So sue me. You can go over to Japan to try to sue some huge corporation 
or China or some of these other countries. Impossible. This is a 
formula for the theft of America's technology and the decline of our 
standard of living.
  A pharmaceutical company, Allergan, pharmaceutical companies spend 
millions of dollars trying to develop new drugs in our country. What 
happens, it takes years to get through the process. If their patent is 
made public, they will not spend that money. No one will spend any 
money to develop new drugs anymore that will cure diseases for our 
people because they will all say why should you spend the money to 
develop it.
  This bill, I compared it yesterday to a bouquet of flowers. When you 
ask these people who are supporting this bill, who are pushing this 
bill through the system, why they could ever support, how could you 
ever support a piece of legislation that would be so destructive to 
America's interests, that would open us up to theft internationally, do 
you know what their answer is? Their answer is, there are a lot of good 
things in this bill.
  Then they will go through a list of nice little things that keeps the 
money in the patent office. It helps facilitate hiring new patent 
employees, and they will go through a list. This is very similar to 
being handed a bouquet of flowers. If you are handed a bouquet of 
flowers and somebody says look at the flowers and then you realize the 
bouquet that he has handed you has a bunch of snakes in the bouquet, 
poisonous snakes. And you ask them, are these snakes poisonous? And if 
that person only wants to talk about the flowers but refuses to talk 
about the snakes, he does not like you. He is not giving you that 
bouquet because he thinks a lot about you. He wants to destroy you.
  What is happening is that a bouquet of flowers has been handed to the 
American people. There are some nice little reforms in H.R. 400. They 
can talk about them all day, but we do not want to talk about the 
bouquet of flowers. We want to talk about the poisonous snakes that 
will destroy our country and poison our system and kill our families. 
That is what we want to talk about. But they will talk about how nice 
the rose looks. I want to talk about why we are publishing our 
information for everybody to steal. But look how nice the flower is. 
How about talking about the daisies. How beautiful. What about this 
idea that now you can have all of our patents attacked, the ones that 
are issued. Do not talk about that.

  The bottom line is, the flowers are not what is important if the 
bouquet is filled with deadly snakes. H.R. 400 is filled with deadly 
snakes and we need to talk about it. Why would anyone want a bill like 
this? Why? Well, Bruce Lehman, head of our Patent Office, went to Japan 
4 years ago. He signed an agreement with the Japanese, the counterpart 
of the Japanese head of the Japanese Patent Office. He signed an 
agreement to harmonize, harmonize America's patent law with Japan.
  Mr. Speaker, I will tell my colleagues, I believe in foreign trade 
and international trade. Harmonizing our laws is a good thing. As long 
as we are

[[Page H1374]]

bringing the standards of America, maintaining those standards and 
bringing other people up to our standards, that is a good thing. 
Instead, their form of harmonization, Mr. Bruce Lehman, head of our 
Patent Office, agreed to make our system like Japan's. This is enough 
to shake anybody up.
  Our Patent Office agreed to change our strong patent system, the 
strongest in the world, to make it exactly like the Japanese system. 
This is horrendous. This is incredible. This is something most 
Americans cannot believe is happening. There will be a vote on this 
issue. All the things I described in H.R. 400 are part of this 
agreement to harmonize our law. It is bringing down the level of 
protection in America to the level they have had in Japan. This 18-
month publication, this no guaranteed patent term, this uncertain 
patent term, that is part of their system. And in Japan they do not 
invent anything. Their people are under the domination of a group of 
economic shoguns who beat individuals and beat the average person into 
submission if that person threatens the power elite in any way.
  If we change our laws to be like Japan's, those economic shoguns, 
those economic gangsters that run that economy will be right here in 
the United States of America doing to our people what they do to their 
own people.
  This law will pass, this harmonization will happen next week in a 
vote unless the people of this country call their Representative and 
say: H.R. 400, the Steal American Technologies Act, is horrible, vote 
against it. If the American people do not contact their Representative, 
these huge corporate interests internationally have hired lobbyists to 
contact your Representative.
  Mr. Lehman, by the way, not only agreed to harmonize our law, but he 
was the same guy, head of our Patent Office, who not too long ago 
wanted to send our entire data base for our Patent Office, the whole 
data base, the home computer database, every bit of information he 
wanted to send it in disk form to the Red Chinese. That was his plan. 
Some of us went crazy and we stopped him. But what he said was he 
wanted to do it so they will know what not to steal, they will know 
what not to steal.
  Unbelievable. Incredible. It is sending the worst thieves in the 
world the combination to your safe and saying this is so you will know 
what safes not to try to crack. I mean, after all, they will not have 
to be thieves anymore, they can come in any time they want. This is 
what is going on. This is the threat to our way of life.
  Basically we have had a group of patent examiners who are now facing 
a major change in their way of life. They are going to see it right 
away. They are all opposed to this bill. All the small inventors, 
people and researchers in our colleges and universities across America, 
Amgen, the biotech company and Allergan, the pharmaceutical company. 
These are people who understand what is going on. The small inventors 
of course, they all oppose H.R. 400; but they cannot get the word out. 
They are looking for allies among the American people who understand 
the importance of the issue that we will be deciding.
  There are an army of lobbyists and they are working this issue. But 
the American people can win. We have won these fights before. But it 
takes all of us to step forward and be active.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe that next week we have got a good chance of 
winning but we also have a good chance of losing. It can go either way, 
but it will be a vote. It will be one of those crucial votes that go by 
that no one will ever understand exactly what happened to them 20 or 30 
years down the road if we go the wrong way. This is Pearl Harbor in 
slow motion.
  This is our Government giving away our seed corn to foreigners. This 
is a situation where, if the Wright Brothers would have had their 
discovery stolen from them by Mitsubishi Corp. because our Government 
publicized all of their secrets, the aerospace industry would have been 
developed in Japan and not the United States. And all of the Americans 
now who have quality high-paying jobs in that industry, they would be 
going, they would not have those jobs. They would say, gee, did not 
America used to be the No. 1 leader? The American people a generation 
from now will never know what hit them if we go the wrong way next 
Thursday.
  So I would hope that my colleagues will join with me in defeating 
H.R. 400, the Steal American Technologies Act. Join with me in voting 
for the Rohrabacher substitute, which is H.R. 811 and 812.

                          ____________________