[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 124 (Tuesday, July 24, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H7148-H7150]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               THE FIGHT TO SAVE AMERICA'S PATENT SYSTEM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, first and foremost, before I get into 
the subject that I will be discussing today, let me just note that 
``American made'' is only important if there are Americans actually in 
the jobs.
  Who is the friend and who is the enemy of American workers today? 
Certainly the party that is permitting massive flow of illegal 
immigrants into our country in order to take the jobs that are being 
created is not a friend of the American working people.
  Let us take a look at why Americans have prospered. We have prospered 
because, yes, we have technology and we have jobs. But it is also 
because we have not permitted this massive immigration that now seems 
to be flowing across and has been for the last 10 and 20 years.
  If we have industries that are going to succeed and jobs that are 
going to be created, we must first control our borders so that all of 
the jobs that we hear about being created are given to Americans, not 
to people who come here illegally.
  It is unfortunate that that part of the debate in how illegal 
immigration has been bringing down the quality of life, taking jobs 
away from Americans, that that has not been part of the debate that we 
have heard over the media.
  In fact, last week, we had an example where the Democratic party 
members here were unable to support a bill on the floor commending 
those brave souls who are defending our border and trying to stem the 
flow--the massive flow of illegal immigration into our country. They 
couldn't get themselves to back that.
  Now, I went to an ICE facility, which is the group in our government 
that actually runs the facilities and helps us control this massive 
flow into our country, and the people there, yes, there were over 300 
being held, and they were going to be returned. They were doing a good 
job for us.
  And the fact is, in California, the Democratic party has gone so far 
overboard, they won't even permit local law enforcement--they have 
actually outlawed--they call it the sanctuary State law--they won't 
even let local governments permit them to use their own law enforcement 
to cooperate with Federal authorities in order to deal with illegal 
alien criminals.
  Now, something is wrong here. We can hear all this talk about 
attacking Republicans as if all the tax money that was saved in this 
tax bill went to rich people. No, that is not the case. And what is 
also not the case is that the very jobs that are being created by such 
programs are going to foreigners who are here illegally, unless we do 
something about it.
  So with that said, I would like to get into the issue that I really 
would like to--that I was intending to discuss today, and it has 
everything to do also with American prosperity. American prosperity 
didn't just happen. So I call this the Fight to Save America's Patent 
System.
  We Americans are blessed to be part of a Nation where average people 
who live right and work hard can expect safety, a decent standard of 
living, and opportunities beyond the dreams of those who just struggle 
to survive in so much of the world--which is also why we have to 
control the borders. Because we do have a high standard of living in 
this world and we have this high standard of living for average people, 
it is not just a gift from God, but it is also a result of fundamental 
policies and laws that have governed our

[[Page H7149]]

land, including immigration laws, I might add, that prevent this 
massive flow of illegals into our country that we have been having to 
deal with.

  Policies were put into place by brave, hardworking, forward-looking 
patriots over the years who struggled to create this new country, the 
United States of America. And they put in place fundamental laws that 
were aimed at protecting the rights of each and every person in the 
country.
  One of those rights, which is often overlooked, was delineated in 
Article I, section 8 of the Constitution. In fact, considering the fact 
that the Bill of Rights was added to the document as a package of 
amendments, it is the only place in the original body of the 
Constitution where the word ``right'' is used. This is that part of our 
basic law of the land that mandates that writers and inventors have the 
right to exclusively control their creation for a specified period of 
time. That is in the Constitution. And that specified period of time, 
which through most of our history was 17 years--17 years for our 
inventors to control and profit from what they have created.
  Benjamin Franklin probably inserted this into the Constitution 
without much fanfare, yet it has been a factor that has made all the 
difference. Ordinary Americans have lived good and decent lives here, 
not necessarily because we have worked harder--because people work hard 
all over the world--but we have prospered because not only have our 
people worked hard, but they have had the technological edge. We have 
multiplied the impact of every hour of labor with machines and 
equipment that existed only as a result of the genius of our people.
  Progress was shared by all because we have nurtured our inventors, 
protected their intellectual property rights, and permitted them to 
profit from their genius. Our standard of living as a people became the 
envy of the world, and all this can be traced to a strong, fair, and 
honest patent system.
  I have got good news. American inventors, the folks who are so often 
taken for granted, are deeply appreciated by the new Trump 
administration. Secretary Wilbur Ross and the new director of the 
United States Patent Office, Andrei Iancu--I guess that is how you 
pronounce that--are making sure that America's greatest assets, our 
inventors and our innovators, are protected. This is, of course, a 
reversal of what has been going on in recent years.
  The United States Patent and Trademark Office, or the USPTO, is the 
Federal agency tasked with the job of protecting America's new ideas 
and investments in innovation and creativity. Over the years, there 
have been 58 different men and women leading this agency.
  Our newest USPTO director, Andrei Iancu, shows the promise to be 
perhaps one of the best in that long line that extends back more than 
200 years. Director Iancu has a long history in innovation, from his 
work as an engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company and his legal career 
that focused on intellectual property litigation. He has assured me 
personally that he will fight to protect the intellectual property of 
our inventors, and he will demand that accountability and transparency 
are hallmarks in the patent office under his watch. His positive 
commitment is refreshing. That is, to make sure that we have this 
transparency and accountability that he is talking about is a 
refreshing contrast to past office leadership.
  Most of my colleagues and most of my fellow Americans have rarely 
noticed the conflict that has been quietly raging here in Washington 
for the last three decades. It has been an ongoing struggle with major 
impact on the security of our country and the well-being of the 
American people.
  Yet few Members of Congress are even aware of how critical this fight 
is, and because the fight is usually fought in legalese, the American 
people are unaware of the issues being determined. What I am talking 
about is an ongoing clandestine attack on America's patent system by 
powerful multinational corporations. Their aim has been to gain a free 
hand to use any technology with no worry of compensating the inventor 
of that said technology.
  American companies and American workers have succeeded by being on 
the cutting edge and a notch above foreign competition. This is because 
our innovators have been protected by the best patent system in the 
world. Yet, we hear these calls globally, and in collusion with 
domestic power brokers, demands that we harmonize our system with the 
rest of the world.
  If there is any harmonization, it should be the rest of the world 
rising up to our long-held standards which have been instrumental in 
enabling our way of life and our country's greatness. We absolutely 
should not lower America's standards.
  But that is exactly what a powerful coalition has been pushing for. 
And in 2012, with the America Invents Act, they finally were able to 
undermine significant protections of our patent system. The 
implications of that law are just now becoming evident.
  So, for three decades, legislation aimed at weakening America's 
patent protection has been pushed and re-pushed, whittling away, and 
restructuring with the goal to diminish the rights of our inventors. 
This establishment thinks these are people who are just in the way. The 
anti-patent juggernaut cabal even managed to change who will be issued 
a patent.
  Up until 2012, up until that law, for more than two centuries, the 
actual inventor of new technology was legally considered the rightful 
owner of the invention and thus designated as the recipient of the 
patent for that new technology.
  This longstanding and commonsense policy was shifted by that 2012 
bill so that now, not the inventor, but the first entity to file for 
the patent gets the patent. Hear that again: The actual inventor 
doesn't get the patent. In an age of hacking and predatory 
corporations, this is a disaster in the making.

                              {time}  2030

  Even as we lost ground in the legislative fight to protect our 
inventors' rights, there was even less awareness of a change in the way 
they were doing business inside the Patent Office. There has always 
been a strict guideline directing the decisions and actions of the 
professionals and civil servants the Patent Office.
  Approval of a patent application was not left up to the whims of 
those making the decision. If an application met the requirements, 
objective criteria, and the proper procedures were followed, if that 
happened, the Patent Office employee was mandated to do his or her 
duty, not to think how they should feel about the economic and societal 
changes that might be brought about when a new technology is 
introduced, or what groups would benefit and which ones wouldn't, if 
this new technology was patented.
  I am not certain what precipitated the power play, but, in 1994, 
changes began happening surreptitiously inside the Patent Office 
itself, even as overt legislative campaigns were taking place to weaken 
our patent system, and they were being launched on the outside.
  So you had people working on the inside and the outside, trying to 
weaken the patent protection of American inventors.
  A new procedure was quietly made part of the system inside. It was 
theoretically aimed at alerting senior patent personnel that a patent 
with serious consequences was soon to be granted and, thus, given more 
intense scrutiny. It was called SAWS, Sensitive Application Warning 
System. But, as you would imagine, as soon as this secretive new 
element was added to the Patent Office procedures, it began to have 
much more of an impact than supposedly intended.
  Unauthorized and hidden SAWS rules and determinations were made that 
had a major impact on the basic business of the Patent Office, the 
issuing or denial of an inventor's patent. Some Patent Office officials 
took it upon themselves to violate the clear legal boundaries that were 
in place specifically to prevent well-intended subjectivity from 
running wild. SAWS had a big impact, much bigger than they ever 
thought, and it had no scrutiny.
  So inventors were being skewered from the outside by those 
legislators mobilized by powerful multinational corporations, and by 
other special interests as well, I might add, and on the inside by an 
in-the-shadows system that permitted unrestricted consideration, no 
visibility, and no accountability.
  It took more than 20 years for this to come to light and officially 
ended. In

[[Page H7150]]

2015, the SAWS program was exposed and made public. And after 
congressional hearings and inquiries, the Patent Office announced the 
program had been retired. As one senior patent official told me, ``That 
program had to go.''
  So it has been an ongoing struggle on the outside and on the inside 
to maintain the strength and integrity of America's patent system.
  On the legislative side, there is a bipartisan coalition now, led by 
dedicated Representatives like Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and Thomas Massie 
of Kentucky. They just introduced H.R. 6264, Restoring America's 
Leadership in Innovation Act of 2018, a bill that will, if we can get 
it enacted, undo many of the legislative setbacks America's patent 
system has suffered in the last two decades. I am, of course, an 
original cosponsor of that bill, and I invite my colleagues to join me 
in cosponsoring it.
  There is really good news--and here is some really good news--from 
the executive branch. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross is deeply 
committed to protecting the intellectual property of American 
inventors. He is willing to fight the good fight to protect us against 
foreign competitors who would steal our inventors' genius and use it 
against our own hardworking people.
  Secretary Ross is working with our new director of the Patent Office, 
Andrei Iancu, and he is committed to protecting inventors and creators. 
Both of them, with President Trump's guidance and Vice President 
Pence's encouragement, are declaring that the patent system will be 
totally transparent and fully accountable.
  I might say, Director Iancu has just reaffirmed that commitment in a 
written statement to Congress:

       Today, at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, every 
     action we take is on the public record and recorded in a 
     publicly available database.

  So there is reason for optimism that we have turned a corner in our 
long-term efforts to protect--and, yes, reclaim and maintain and 
repair--some of the damages that have been done from both the outside 
attack of our patent system and the inside, out-of-line actions that 
were taken without oversight or accountability, like the SAWS program.
  It is not appropriate to cover up or withhold information. It is time 
to make up for those past errors and to set a path for America's Patent 
Office to offer efficient, honest, and totally above-board service.
  The new director has his hands full. But he has the right game plan: 
total transparency and full accountability.
  When it comes to innovation and technology, we are, with our American 
President, the Vice President, the Secretary of Commerce, and the team 
over at the Patent Office, together, making America great again.
  So I would ask my colleagues, please, I know this is a complicated 
issue, we talked to the American people, we know that patent law seems 
like it should be complicated, but it is not. For someone who invents 
something, our Founding Fathers put into place a property right for 
those people who invent, an inventor, to be able, at least for 17 
years, have control over his or her invention.
  This has worked well for the United States. It is so sad that, for 
decades now, they have been trying to undermine it. But we are 
reclaiming that today with the Trump administration, the Secretary of 
Commerce, the head of the Patent Office, and the Vice President of the 
United States, who are dedicated to protecting the rights of our 
inventors and, thus, protecting the great standard of living and the 
safety of the United States of America, which is so dependent on having 
a technological edge against any competitor or enemy.

  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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