[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 18346-18353]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              STEAL AMERICAN TECHNOLOGIES ACT, THE SEQUEL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Wilson of Ohio). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Rohrabacher) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to discuss with the 
Members here assembled and those listening on C-SPAN and those who will 
be reading the Congressional Record an issue that may well be 
determined here on the House floor in the next few weeks, at least 
perhaps in this session if not in the next few weeks. It is an issue 
that will fundamentally alter and I would say dramatically diminish a 
constitutionally protected right and will have tremendous long-term 
consequences for our country; yet, very few people in this country know 
that this issue is coming before us. Very few of our Members even 
understand that an issue of this significance will be discussed here. 
But there will be a fight, and there is an issue of great importance 
that will emerge here in the not-too-distant future.
  The fight over this issue of course is not a new fight. In the late 
1990s, similar attempts were made at what will be attempted in the next 
few weeks. Those attempts were made, but they were defeated. They were 
defeated after the public was mobilized, and powerful forces that were 
at play here in our Nation's Capital were defeated. Without the public 
mobilizing against this particular change that was being proposed by 
the corporate elite here in Washington, our system of technology in the 
United States would have been dramatically impacted and the well-being 
of our people in the long run would be condemned.
  The battle, which took place in the 1990s, lasted for years. 
Corporate pressure was brought to bear, and every attempt was made to 
accomplish what I consider to be an insidious goal through stealth, and 
it was being done in a way that would keep as low a profile as 
possible. We see that happening today. Very few of our Members know 
that there is an issue of this magnitude coming before us, but special 
interests are already at play. We see people, we see organizations 
being well financed to come here and talk to us about technology 
issues, not realizing the real purpose of these organizations and the

[[Page 18347]]

financing behind them is to push forward a change that will 
dramatically impact America's ability to be the technological leader of 
the world and dramatically implicate our innovators and our inventors.
  The American people, however, back in the 1990s, once alerted and 
made aware of the significance to our country of the changes that were 
being proposed, stood up and fought the good fight and beat back this 
attempt for fundamental change in a stealth manner. They in fact beat 
back the onslaught, but just barely. However, once the American people 
were made aware of the significance of what was going on, they won the 
day.
  Does it sound familiar? Yes, it sounds tremendously familiar if you 
look at what just happened with the immigration bill in which the 
elites of this country were trying to foist upon us a bill which would 
legalize the status of tens of millions of illegals that are in this 
country, only bringing tens of millions of more illegals into this 
country, an attempt to foist this off on the American people, to cover 
it up with clouds of smoke talking about a comprehensive bill whose 
only purpose was really to legalize the status, to give amnesty to 
those who are already here. And once the American people understood 
that, that bill was defeated.
  We need that same type of mobilization if America's future 
generations are to be protected from the greatest theft of American 
technology and innovation that could ever be imagined by our people 
today.
  Today, we face this onslaught that is very similar to that of the 
1990s because the same goals are in mind by the same interest groups 
who would have fundamentally changed the American patent system, but 
they were defeated. Luckily, they were defeated because the American 
people, as I say, were mobilized. What we have here, as we had in the 
case of the fight on immigration, was that the issue itself, whether it 
is immigration or the fundamental changes being proposed to our patent 
system, are part of a greater threat. That threat which would manifest 
itself every now and then, perhaps four or five times a year we see 
this emerging, is part of a strategic maneuver by those who we would 
call globalists.
  The fundamental threat is the globalism, which is being advocated and 
sometimes touted on television, et cetera, is something that, if we 
don't watch out, will be experienced at the expense of the American 
people. Globalism as it is being foisted on us as the immigration bill 
was will come at the expense of the American people of their freedom 
and their prosperity and, yes, even the safety of our country.
  The battle at hand is the globalist strategy to deprive us, the 
American people, of the greatest source of our Nation's progress and 
strength: the creative genius of our own people; the innovation and 
technological leadership that has provided us with a decent standard of 
living for ordinary people and more freedom than any other country on 
the planet.
  The globalists are at it again, seeking to change our laws in a way 
which would facilitate their power, would facilitate in this case the 
theft and transfer of American technology, the theft of the genius of 
our inventors, which has been one of our country's greatest assets.
  People say, how could this possibly be? Well, how could it be that 
this Congress almost passed, there was a steam engine and a steamroller 
coming down the path at us that almost passed an immigration bill that 
would have brought millions, tens of millions, perhaps as many as 50 
million more illegals into our country because we would have been 
legalizing the status of 10 million to 20 million illegals who are here 
already. How did that almost happen? Well, it almost happened because 
there are forces at work in a democratic society.
  In this case, the globalist forces, the same ones who were at play on 
immigration, the ones who thought it would be better for everybody if 
we just had an open border with Mexico, because that is what really was 
the goal by the immigration fight. The whole fight was all about big 
businessmen who thought it would be really good to have an open border 
so we could keep down wages, and of course the liberal left of the 
Democratic Party who felt that as many immigrants that we have swarming 
into our country gives them a political base. Well, those same people 
who are pushing that are now working to push through wholesale changes 
in our patent laws, changes that will undermine our independent 
inventors and allow our competitors to steal our technology, American 
technology, and seriously weaken our country and its competitiveness.
  The legislative vehicle for this legalized larceny is H.R. 1908, 
which I call the Steal American Technologies Act. In this case, because 
it reflects a very similar bill that was attempted a few years ago, we 
will call it the Steal American Technologies Act, the Sequel.

                              {time}  2015

  It is a dramatic altering of our patent laws, and our patent laws 
that they're trying to change have been in place since our country's 
founding. Patent law, of course, is an issue that is somewhat obscure, 
and it is an issue that is very difficult to understand in that it is 
related directly to new and unknown technologies and science, and deals 
with complicated parts of American law.
  The globalists have hoped that this issue will seem so perplexing 
that it will be ignored by much of the public and perhaps not even 
understood by most Members of Congress. Yet, how Congress resolves this 
issue, once it's brought before us in legislative form, will determine 
the future well-being of our people and the security of our country. It 
is just that important. Just as the immigration bill was important and 
important for the American people to get involved, this issue is of 
equal importance to that in terms of our future.
  This Congress will determine the fundamental patent law, the legal 
protections, the organizational structure in which we deal with 
technology commercialization. All of this will determine what our 
country is going to be like in the next 50 years and who and what kind 
of power we will have as a people on this planet. We will be making a 
determination of what the patent law of the United States of America 
will be for this generation and future generations of Americans.
  Of course, in the past, our Founding Fathers were in the same 
position; they made the right decision. They put in place patent law, 
which now we are seeing the elite of this society and the globalists 
throughout the world trying to bring down this fundamental law that was 
put into place by our Founding Fathers.
  Patent law is part of the American legal system and, as I said, it is 
something that perhaps has been taken for granted by the American 
people. Who pays attention to patent law? As I say, it's complicated, 
hard to understand.
  However, every time we turn around, we can see that it is America's 
technological edge that has permitted the American people to have the 
highest standard of living in the world and permitted our country to 
sail safely through the troubled waters of economic crisis, of world 
wars and of international threats. It is American technology and our 
genius that has made all the difference when it counted. And it is the 
American patent law that has determined what technology and at what 
level of technological development that America has had.
  This is not an obscure issue. This is an issue that will change our 
way of life. This is an issue of vital importance to every American, 
and it will determine the future standard of living of our people and 
the safety of our country.
  We Americans came to this continent, by and large, as poor 
immigrants, millions of us. We faced the most undeveloped land 
imaginable. There was no land anywhere in the world at that time that 
was more undeveloped than the United States of America. When our 
Founding Fathers and mothers came here, they suffered deprivation. They 
were not safe. They were not prosperous. They died of hunger, and they 
worked very hard. And

[[Page 18348]]

yes, we had space. Yes, we had lots of space and resources. But it 
wasn't the space and the resources that changed this group of huddled 
masses that came here, these poor souls that came here over those 
hundreds of years. It wasn't the resources and the space that changed 
their way of life and made them a prosperous and free people.
  The secret of America's success is found not in our wide expansions 
or the deposit of minerals. Instead, the secret to our success can be 
found in the fact that our people had the freedom that our Founding 
Fathers fought for, and they had guaranteed rights, and also, of 
course, we, as a people, had a dream. We had a dream of a country where 
average people, yes, even people who are below average, can come and 
can prosper and can live at peace, a country made up of people from 
every part of the world, every race, every religion, every creed, every 
ethnic background, who could come and could live together in dignity 
and with liberty, and, of course, they could live free from fear. They 
could live with the understanding that everyone's child would have an 
opportunity to improve him or herself, to enjoy a rising standard of 
living that was based on their hard work and, yes, as Martin Luther 
King said, on the content of their character.
  We believed, as a people, in rights and believed these rights to be 
given by God and that the purpose of government was protecting these 
rights.
  Well, most people, when they think of that, think of religion and 
think of speech and the right of assembly. But patent rights are a 
right of property. It's a right that is written into our Constitution. 
The United States of America is one of the only countries of the world 
to have written into its founding document, the Constitution, a section 
dealing with patent rights.
  Let us note that in the body of the Constitution, before the Bill of 
Rights, the word right is only used once, and that is the right of an 
author or an inventor to own and control the product of his labor, his 
or her labor, for a given period of time.
  In fact, Benjamin Franklin was a great inventor as well as one of our 
Founding Fathers and one of the great champions of liberty in the 
history of humankind, as was Thomas Jefferson, as was Washington.
  It was George Washington who requested of the First Continental 
Congress that they pass, as one of their first laws, a patent law, the 
Patent Act of 1790, which became the foundation of America's 
technological progress from that point till today.
  Others of our Founding Fathers were people who believed in freedom, 
but they also believed in technology. Visit Monticello and see what 
Thomas Jefferson did with his time after he penned the words of the 
Declaration of Independence and had served as President of United 
States. He went back to Monticello and spent his time inventing things, 
things that would lift the burden from the shoulders of labor. Yes, he, 
in fact, signed his name as the first Patent Commissioner of the United 
States, which was invested in the Office of the Secretary of State at 
that time.
  Benjamin Franklin, the inventor of the bifocal and the stove, the 
potbellied stove, which made a huge difference in the well-being of 
people for hundreds of years thereafter.
  These Founding Fathers were our Founding Fathers, and they knew that 
with freedom and technology, we could increase the standard of living 
of our people, all our people, not just the elite, but the average 
person could come here and live with a modicum of dignity and decency 
and prosperity in their lives.
  Our people were not just the Americans who were here, our Founding 
Fathers knew that, but were the tens of millions of Americans who would 
come here in the future on such a grand scale. And we would know, and 
they knew that if the people were going to come here and occupy this 
land from one part of the continent to the other, that wealth would 
have been to be produced on a grand scale as well. It couldn't be 
relied on just on brute muscle strength and the strength of animals.
  Instead, our Founding Fathers knew that machines and technology would 
produce the wealth necessary to have a free and prosperous society. 
That's why they built into our Constitution the strongest patent 
protection of anywhere in the world, and that is why, in the history of 
mankind there has never been a more innovative nor creative people.
  It's not just the diversity of our people that's given us this 
creativity. It's been the innovation and progress that was inherent in 
the way we structured our law, our patent law.
  Recently I sat next to a Japanese minister over lunch, and he was 
telling me how Americans are always the ones who are coming up with the 
creative new ideas; what we do is just improve on those ideas, but 
we're trying to make our people more creative. And he was discussing 
different ways. And I said, it's real easy. All you have to do is make 
sure you change your patent system. You have a fundamentally different 
patent system than we do. He was shocked. He'd never thought of that.
  And, in fact, the patent system in Japan was designed to help 
corporate interests utilize technology rather than protect the rights 
of the creators of new ideas. And of course, if the creators are being 
bullied and robbed, they're not going to come up with much. And guess 
what? In Japan, they don't, because your Shogun system of elitists in 
Japan steal the technology from their own creative people, and thus, 
their people don't create.
  Americans have known that they have rights to own their own creations 
since the founding of our country. That has become part of our 
character, although most people don't relate it back to the law. Most 
people don't relate the character of our people back to the law when it 
comes to freedom of speech and those things in our Constitution as 
well, freedom of religion. But they are so important to the development 
of our national character. We would have had a different national 
character without those rights and without the rights that were granted 
to our inventors and our technologists in our Constitution by our 
Founding Fathers.
  Everyone has heard about Thomas Fulton's steamboat. Well, let me note 
that Thomas Fulton didn't invent the steam engine. He invented the 
steamboat. Because in Europe and elsewhere, they didn't see technology 
necessarily as something that was very good. The average person thought 
technology was going to replace me as a job, and the steam engine was 
not permitted to be used there.
  In the United States, the American people always understood machines 
will help produce more wealth. It will magnify the production and the 
by-product of our labor, and it's good for people to have a society 
which has more wealth rather than less.
  So Mr. Fulton put that steam engine on a boat and put it to work 
because we knew, and the American people as well as our leaders knew, 
that machines, good technology will help all the people of a country.
  Cyrus McCormick invented a reaper that helped produce more food so 
people were well fed in this country, as compared to other societies 
which have had so many famines.
  Samuel Morse invented the telegraph, which led to the telephone, et 
cetera. Thomas Edison, the light bulb, and so many other inventions.
  Black Americans, here's something that is never recognized too much 
out of the Black community, but Black Americans have been prolific 
inventors. Even at times of mass discrimination against our Black 
fellow citizens, the patent office and rights, property rights for 
inventions were respected, and the Black community succeeded in, 
perhaps more than any other community compared to their numbers, in 
offering inventions and innovations.
  Jan Metzlinger was a Black, former Black slave who invented a machine 
that was used in the manufacturing of shoes which dramatically changed 
the shoe industry. And before then, Americans had one pair of shoes. 
They could expect to have one pair of shoes in their life. And it was a 
Black man who invented the machine that made the production of shoes so 
effective and efficient that people could have different

[[Page 18349]]

shoes. And when they wore out, they didn't have to wear shoes that had 
holes in the bottom of them.
  George Washington Carver, one of the great renowned American 
inventors, respected by scientists, respected throughout the world; 
there are so many examples of Black inventors, because their rights in 
that area, that one little area of the Constitution, while they were 
being suppressed in other areas, their rights for ownership of patents 
was respected and thus, in that area, they prevailed and they flowered. 
And they invented things that did wonderful things for our country and 
the rest of our population. It's too bad it took so long for us to 
catch up in the other areas of protecting the rights of Black 
Americans. But they can be proud that, even during the time when they 
were under suppression, that they were able to succeed in developing 
new creative ideas that helped this entire country.
  We are proud of our history of technologies, because we know, as 
Americans, as we have always known, that these inventions, no matter 
who invented them, would produce more wealth with less labor and thus 
increase the standard of living of all of our people and the 
opportunity of all of our people. And thus, it built a society which we 
have become very proud of and that we should be proud of.
  But I suggest today that if we change those fundamental laws, which 
this bill is attempting to do, we will obliterate, in one or two 
generations, the great progress that we've experienced in the standing 
of the American people among the nations.
  Yes, we look back at the Wright brothers; we remember them. The 
Wright brothers, who were they? They were men with little education, 
probably like Mr. Metzlinger. I just mentioned he worked in a shoe 
factory. These men worked in a bicycle shop, and they ended up 
inventing something about 100 years ago that they were told was 
absolutely impossible by the experts.

                              {time}  2030

  Yet they went ahead and they received a patent. They received a 
patent on how to shape the wing of their airplane, and they changed the 
future of mankind forever as we uplifted humankind off the ground and 
put us on a road to the heavens. Two Americans, ordinary Americans, not 
rich people, not educated greatly. Two people who ran a bicycle shop. 
These are the people we are proud of because we understand that is what 
America is all about that these people have their rights and freedom.
  Innovation, a great creative genius, is the miracle that produced our 
wealth. Not just the muscle. It was the genius of our people. It was 
the tenacity of the Wright brothers and Cyrus McCormick and others and 
their genius that produced the wealth and produced these technologies 
that have changed all humankind and all Americans. And this creativity 
that we are talking about was protected by law.
  We have treated the intellectual property rights in this country and 
the creation of new technology just as we have treated other rights. 
They are property rights and they are respected. They have been part of 
our country, part of our law, that individuals have a right, as 
determined by our Constitution and as outlined in our first fundamental 
laws since 1790, that these property protections would be afforded to 
American inventors. And that is what America is all about. Every one of 
us has that kind of opportunity.
  Does anyone think that in World War II and in the Cold War that it 
wasn't our technological genius as well as our commitment to freedom 
that carried the day? We didn't fight the Germans and the Japanese man 
to man, just as in the Cold War, we didn't fight the Russians and the 
Chinese man to man in great battles. No. What happened is, if we would 
have tried to match them in pure muscle power, we would have lost. 
Instead, our aerospace workers, our scientists, our inventors, our 
computer specialists, our missile technicians, our rocket builders, 
and, yes, those scientists who came up with and are currently about to 
deploy a strategic missile defense system for the United States, all of 
these technological workers helped make the difference in those 
challenges to our national security, whether against the Nazis and the 
Japanese militarists or the communists. And, yes, perhaps even against 
radical Islam, should some regime there or in North Korea send a 
missile in our direction, our technologists may well be providing us a 
defense. Yes, we won the Cold War without having to suffer a massive 
conflagration because we relied not only just on the courage and the 
faith and the freedom but also in the superior technology that was 
flowing from our people. And that was because our American inventors 
were matched by no one in the world.
  Today it is my sad duty to inform my fellow colleagues and the 
American people that we face a great historic threat. This threat comes 
at exactly the time when our country faces economic challenges from 
abroad as never before. We must prevail over our economic competitors 
because they are at war with the well-being of the American people. We 
must win or our country's people will lose. If we lose this battle, our 
people will suffer, their standard of living will suffer, their freedom 
will suffer. Future generations will see their standard of living 
decline as well as the safety and strength of our country. If we do not 
remain the technologically superior power on this planet, we will face 
new challenges and we will be defeated and our people will no longer 
have the prosperity and the rights that were the dream of those 
founders who came here 300 years ago to inaugurate this wonderful 
country, the United States of America.
  Our adversaries have identified technology as our strong point. They 
see it right away. Americans are innovative, just like that Japanese 
minister that I was talking about. Americans are innovative. We have 
the new ideas, the new concepts. We have the ways of coming up with a 
different twist. We have the can-do spirit. There is nothing that can't 
be done with freedom and technology.
  Well, they have identified this as our strong point. But it is also a 
weak point in that many Americans have no idea what legal structure was 
established that has protected this part of the American character, 
this legal establishment, this legal foundation that has permitted us 
to have creative people and build this type of genius within our 
society.
  What I have been talking about is the fundamental patent law of our 
country. Our economic adversaries and their allies are engaged in a 
systematic attack on the patent rights of the American people. These 
adversaries, of course, among them are the leaders of multinational 
corporations, some of whom are based right here in the United States. 
These multinational corporations are run by an elite whose allegiance 
is to no country. Most significantly, we do not know if their 
allegiance is to the United States of America.
  These are the same people who will take the product of research and 
development grants provided by the taxpayers of the United States and 
build factories in China based on those technologies. These are the 
same people who would eliminate jobs in the United States and create 
factories in China in order to make a 15- to 20-percent profit as 
compared to a 5- or 10-percent profit here. But over here they would be 
dealing with American citizens; over there they are dealing with 
slaves. The corporate elite that does this is behind and is pushing for 
the changes in our patent law that I am talking about today. And these 
multinationals and the elite that run them are not watching out for us.
  If the globalists are successful, 20 years from now our citizens will 
wonder what hit them. Pearl Harbor happened in one moment. Our people 
woke up to the threat and mobilized. Today it is happening slowly. The 
attack is less evident, but our rights are being robbed and eroded, and 
changes in our law are being made that will decrease our standard of 
living and damage our way of life and will be devastating to the 
American people, and they will not know what hit them. This attack is

[[Page 18350]]

being conducted not by the bombers on Pearl Harbor, but the bombs that 
are being planted are being planted by lobbyists in our nation's 
capital who are working for multinational corporations, who believe, 
perhaps, that we can make everything better with a globalist strategy. 
But they are willing to pillage the wealth of our country and transfer 
that wealth and transfer power overseas in order to succeed in building 
a new global strategy, a new global concept.
  One of the steps necessary for this great global vision to succeed is 
the destruction of the American patent system. As I say, lobbyists have 
been hired by well-heeled multinational corporations and by companies 
who no longer have any desire to pay for the use of technology that has 
been developed by American citizens. They, of course, are not saying, 
well, we are going to destroy the patent system. Nobody is just coming 
up and saying we want to destroy the patent system. We want to steal 
all of America's technology. They are not saying that because we might 
be a little upset because we would notice that they are the same people 
who are setting up factories in China using slave labor and putting our 
people out of work. They wouldn't be that upfront.
  Instead, they are suggesting our patent system is broken and needs to 
be fixed. We have heard it before: The immigration system is broken. We 
need a comprehensive bill. And in the end, the comprehensive bill that 
was coming over here that was being voted on would have made the 
situation a lot worse. This is exactly what this elite is trying to do 
right now in terms of American technology and the patent system. They 
are using a system that needs to be fixed, the patent system, which has 
some flaws, organizational flaws, and they are saying we are going to 
fix it; yet the fixes they are proposing would destroy the system as we 
know it.
  No. Instead, we need to correct the flaws in the system. And, again, 
if it sounds like a replay of immigration, it is exactly right. It is 
the same strategy. But they failed then, and if the American people are 
mobilized, they will fail again.
  We hear about widespread problems in terms of the Patent Office. This 
is what we are going to hear from the elite, from the people involved 
in this globalist attempt to destroy America's patent protections. We 
are going to hear about patent lawsuits, about horror stories 
concerning companies that are tied up for years in court and then 
eventually have to give up and relent to trial laws because there are 
so many delays inside the patent system. And we are going to hear about 
examiners who are overworked, underpaid, and without proper education 
and training.
  Well, in reality the patent lawsuits are no more of a major problem 
than they ever were. Between 1993 and the year 2005, the number of 
patent lawsuits versus the number of patents granted has held steady at 
about 1.5 percent. In fact, in 2006 there were only 102 patent cases 
that actually went to trial.
  But there are some very real changes that are needed and problems 
that need to be solved in the patent system. Unfortunately, the 
legislation making its way through the system does not correct these 
problems. The problems are being used as an excuse to act, but the 
proposed changes are aimed at other than the more significant goals.
  So let's understand that we need patent legislation. We need patent 
legislation that speeds up the patent process and provides training and 
compensation for patent examiners and helps us protect our inventors 
against foreign theft. We need to make sure that the people who are the 
inventors of our country can use this system. But the bill that is 
being presented to us and these maladies that are being used to justify 
this new bill do not correlate.
  The fact is the bill will not solve the problems but will obliterate 
the fundamental rights that have been granted since our country's 
founding. Just like the immigration bill, as I say. The problems 
created by our current policymakers, of course, they could have 
corrected any of these problems with the patent system over the past 10 
years, but those problems that are still around are being used as an 
excuse to destroy the system within a cloud of smoke.
  Well, the people have been trying to do this, as I said, for over a 
decade, the power elite in this country, and they were thwarted. Now 
they are back. We can all understand what this is all about when we 
just remember the word ``comprehensive.'' That was being used as a 
cover not to reform and strengthen our control and management of 
immigration but to destroy our ability to stop the massive flow of 
illegal immigration into our country. That is the same thing that is 
happening in terms of patent legislation.
  There are some problems with the way our patent system is operating. 
It can be much more effective. But instead of correcting those 
problems, it is being used as a smokescreen. H.R. 1908 is designed not 
to correct the problems but to destroy the patent protections our 
people have enjoyed.
  So, first, H.R. 1908 creates a post-grant review process. What does 
it do? The first thing is a post-grant review process, which means that 
after someone is granted their patent, people can still come back and 
challenge them after the patent has been granted. For the little guy, 
this is a disaster because the little guy doesn't have the money for 
all the lawyers. Once the patent is granted, that should be a situation 
when the patent is granted. Instead, H.R. 1908 attempts to create an 
endless process of challenges to a small inventor.
  Second, H.R. 1908 changes our patent system to award patents based on 
first-to-file rather than first-to-invent. This is a little hard to 
understand, but since our country's founding, if an inventor could 
prove that he has invented something, he would then be protected. His 
rights to own that would be protected. In other countries, if big 
corporations immediately just file patent after patent after patent 
every time they come to a small step forward, they can protect 
themselves, but the small inventor will never be able to do so.
  Third, the most egregious of all the items in H.R. 1908, and people 
should pay attention to what I am saying here because this is 
fundamentally different than every patent system in the world, up until 
now the American citizen, if he has filed for a patent, until that 
patent is granted, the patent is kept totally secret.

                              {time}  2045

  In fact, patent examiners can go to jail for felonies if they 
disclose that information. And then, when the patent is granted, no 
matter how long it takes, even if it takes 10 years to do so, the 
inventor gets to have 17 years of patent protection where he owns that 
technology. That has been our tradition. What do we want to do? This 
bill, H.R. 1908, the ``Steal American Technologies Act,'' the sequel, 
what does it do? It wants to make sure that anybody who files for a 
patent, any inventor, if he has not been granted his patent within 18 
months, perhaps because of bureaucratic snafus or whatever, that patent 
is going to be put on the Internet, that patent is going to published 
for every thief in the world, every Chinese manufacturer, every 
Japanese manufacturer, every Korean manufacturer, anybody in the world 
who wants to steal it will be able to have it and be in production 
before our inventors get their patents even granted to them.
  So, let's take a look at these three proposals of this H.R. 1908. The 
proposed grant review process is a gift to the large corporations and 
the powerful elites, which they wish to destroy the small inventor. As 
I say, they are going to be able to grind the small inventor down. For 
the invalidation of a patent, a company, if they can show they've been 
economically disadvantaged by the patent, they can force a review of 
the Patent Office of that patent. So if somebody invents something 
that's going to be wonderful for a lot of people in the country but 
will put another business out of work because they don't need buggy 
whips anymore, then the buggy whip manufacturer, who now has a lot of 
money because over the years, under the old system, everybody needed a 
buggy whip, they're going to

[[Page 18351]]

use that wealth to tie up and destroy those innovators who would bring 
us forward. Because now, even once the patent is issued, they can keep 
filing complaint after complaint, challenge after challenge. The little 
guys will never be able to cope with that.
  Second of all, this legislation doesn't stop just there. As I said, 
it lowers the bar for providing a patent's invalidity to current 
standards of clear and convincing evidence. It basically lowers, for 
some of the standards that we have operated on, from clear and 
convincing evidence to the preponderance of evidence, which of course 
erodes the confidence an inventor has that his patent won't later be 
just revoked by the Patent Office. So it's changing the standards and 
allowing them to have future challenges. The small inventor is going to 
be ground down.
  But, of course, the worst part, what's this? H.R. 1908 also, of 
course, does not limit the number of times that a patent can be 
challenged, so time after time grounds these down. So it's not just one 
challenge after a patent has been granted, but a continual challenge to 
the small inventor.
  This proposed change from first-to-invent to first-to-file is yet 
another attack on the small inventor. The United States is unique in 
using the first-to-invent system. All the rest of the countries have 
first-to-file. And this has ensured that the true inventors will 
receive the benefit of their invention instead of a thief who happens 
on some information.
  Changing it to first-to-file will create a massive problem for the 
small inventor. Inventors will have to rush to the Patent Office, 
hurriedly scrambling to file the necessary documents every time they've 
made one small step forward. This will cause less thorough 
applications. So we're going to have people who are applying, because 
they have to apply for so many, the applications will not be as well 
thought out and not as thorough. And this will add to the burden of the 
Patent Office, which will mean there will be even more work for the 
Patent Office and even more delays.
  So this will benefit, yes, large corporations who can afford patent 
after patent after patent after patent application, but for the small 
inventor who only has a little bit of money, he will be totally rolled 
over.
  Now, the thieves in China and elsewhere are waiting for the day when 
we change this patent law to what this last suggestion is under H.R. 
1908. Because this is very similar to the immigration bill. The only 
purpose of the immigration bill was to give amnesty, was to grant legal 
status to those people who are here legally. The only reason for the 
patent bill is this particular provision, and that is, American 
inventors have had a protection that their applications will be secret, 
if they file in the United States, that their patent will be secret up 
until that patent is granted to them, but this bill changes it. After 
18 months, all patent applications will be made public. Now get into 
that: Under this bill, after 18 months, even if a patent hasn't been 
granted, everybody in the world is going to be able to know all of the 
secrets in the patent application. Thieves around the world will be 
counting down the days until America's best ideas are put on display 
and in great detail for everyone to examine, even though the inventor 
has no protection at that point.
  How do we know that this piracy will happen? We know because Japan, 
which I have mentioned has a different patent system, already publishes 
patent applications, and it is suffering from a withering attack from 
China and elsewhere. The Japanese actually take their patent 
applications and, after 18 months, put them on the Web. Well, what 
happens? The Japanese patent applications on the Web, that Web site 
receives 17,000 hits a day from China, and 55,000 hits a day from 
Korea. The people viewing the Web site are not simply curious about 
some gizmo or gadget; they're interested in one thing: They want to 
steal someone else's creative ideas.
  H.R. 1908 would give every thief in the world an opportunity to take 
America's technology and use it even before our people are granted a 
patent. Why would anybody want to do this? Well, the same people who 
want to do this are the same people who are building factories in China 
and use slave labor. I can tell you that right now.
  This is basically coming out of the high electronics industry. You 
know what some of those people are doing right now? Some of those 
people are over there helping the Chinese Government track down 
religious dissidents, people who want democracy or believe in God, but 
want to use the Internet, our technology companies are over there 
helping them track these people down and throwing them in jail. And you 
know what they want to do here? They want to steal all the technology 
from every American inventor and not pay them a royalty. That's what's 
going on here. And of course, they're in alliance with the other global 
elitists from other countries.
  This is not the type of force in our society that we should permit to 
make the rules on how this country functions. We would be giving, if 
this bill passes, our economic competitors, even our enemies, access to 
our Nation's technological breakthroughs and scientific achievements. 
H.R. 1908 does that by demanding that all patent applications be put on 
the Internet to view and to steal even before the patent is issued.
  If it's hard to believe, people need to hear it again: We have an 
elite in the electronics industry that is so intent on taking the 
technologies that are being developed by our inventors and not giving 
them royalties, that they want to change this fundamental part of our 
patent law that has protected our individual inventors, protected them 
by saying, what you invent is yours for 17 years and that no one will 
know about your patent application until your patent is issued; they 
want to change this fundamental nature of our system.
  This provision is not only a bad idea and not only will it harm the 
American inventor, it will hurt the American people by putting us at 
risk to our enemies. Already we are seeing a flow of technology and of 
capital assets to China, which is a major adversary, maybe not an enemy 
now, but perhaps someday an enemy. Our schools are filled with graduate 
students from China and elsewhere, and they are learning the secrets 
that cost us billions of dollars of research to come up with. We are 
not watching out for the American people. And H.R. 1908 would, again, 
be a dagger in the heart of the American standard of living and our 
ability to secure our country.
  What is really going on here is an effort. Of course, they will claim 
that we have to do this because Japan does it, and Europe does it. They 
want to harmonize America's laws, our patent laws, with the rest of the 
world. Well, why don't they try that with the rest of the Constitution? 
If we wanted to harmonize the freedom of speech and religion with 
everybody else in the world, would the American people stand for that? 
We have the strongest patent protection of any country in this planet, 
just like we have the protection for other rights. If people want to 
harmonize with American law, we want a globalist approach to patents or 
to technology and to freedoms and rights, people can harmonize with us. 
Let them come up to our standards.
  If the American people were out to harmonize the law, that's one 
thing, but we wouldn't even dream of doing that. The American people 
would never go along with having our religious freedom or freedom of 
speech and other freedoms that we have that are guaranteed by our 
Constitution; we would never permit them to say, well, we have to have 
the same level of freedom as they have in Singapore or Vietnam or, 
let's say, Ukraine or Belarus. No. The fact is, the American people are 
proud that we have guaranteed rights and that our Constitution protects 
these rights.
  And I know that many people do not understand the part that has been 
played by the rights that were granted in our Constitution to our 
inventors specifically, but they are vitally important to America's 
safety and well-being. If we move to harmonize patent law, no, things 
will not go more smoothly for our country and for the

[[Page 18352]]

world, what will emerge is a global elite which wants to mandate upon 
the American people the same things they mandate on the surfs and the 
servants and the people of other countries who they feel that they are 
naturally endowed with the right to tell them what to do.
  No, no. We believe that every individual has rights in this country, 
and we are not going to harmonize our laws, whether they're patent 
laws, and we are proud that we have a standard of living that has 
flowed from our patent laws and our technology laws. We are proud of 
that, and we are not going to bring down our standard of living in 
order to harmonize it with the rest of the world.
  And yes, those businesses that are flowing over to China to use slave 
labor, yes, we do not want the elite of those companies making policy 
in the United States, especially if it's policy that would allow them 
to steal innovative and creative technology ideas from America's 
inventors, from the little guy. The fact is, we have had the strongest 
protection of patent rights of any place in the world, and thus we have 
had more innovation and a higher standard of living than the other 
people of the world. The common man here has the opportunity that 
common people in other parts of the world do not have because America 
has had technological superiority. And if our rights to our patent 
protection are diminished in order to harmonize those rights with the 
rest of the world, it should be no great surprise when we will end up 
with the same type of country that they have in those countries, that 
our people will have the same type of opportunity and standard of 
living and freedom that they have in third world countries. Is that 
what we want? Well, the corporate elite doesn't care what we want 
because they don't care about us. They were the ones that wanted to 
bring in tens of millions of more immigrants into our society illegally 
because they knew that if we legalized the status of those 15 to 20 
illegals that are already here, that would bring in 50 million more. 
They don't care enough about us to want to stop that, and they don't 
care enough about us to want us to have a high standard of living.
  This is another inherent conflict between the globalists and the 
patriots. If we do not win this battle, if we are not vigilant, America 
will lose and future Americans will not enjoy the freedom and 
prosperity and safety that we Americans enjoy today.
  This destruction of our fundamental patent system is an abomination, 
a long-term threat to the well-being of the American people, and it 
will benefit basically wealthy and powerful interests, an elite that 
has no loyalty to the United States or to our people. Our people have 
got to know that this is a threat to all of us. Our people need to 
unite, as we did on the fight against this immigration bill that would 
have been a disaster for our country and a disaster for ordinary 
Americans, we need to unite and we need to organize and we need to make 
sure that people in this body, in the House of Representatives, know 
that H.R. 1908 is something that is contrary to the interests of our 
country and is contrary to the interests of working people. And anyone 
voting for it, it won't be tolerated if that's the way people feel 
about it. Those advocating the ``sledge hammer'' approach to patent 
reform, allegedly addressing just small problems, but using a sledge 
hammer to fix those small problems, are, in reality, advocating a 
complete reconstruction, and I would suggest destruction, of our patent 
laws. If they really want to address specific problems, just like it 
was in the bill with the immigration, let them target those solutions 
instead of using a bulldozer in the name of knocking down a mole hill.

                              {time}  2100

  Yes, we can make our patent system more efficient. We can make sure 
that those patent examiners are trained and well educated and that they 
know the system and that the system works faster and more efficiently.
  One thing we could do is make sure everyone who pays for a patent 
that that money stays in the patent system. Another thing is we can 
make sure that there are plenty of scholarships available for people 
who can get their PhDs in their scientific endeavors in these areas so 
they can come back and work in the patent office. We can correct our 
problem. But destroying and rearranging the rights of our inventors 
would be a catastrophe. Think about it. If you have a hangnail, and it 
is painful, and you go to a doctor, and the doctor goes to great 
lengths and says, oh, what a horrible hangnail you have there, you must 
be in pain, and, look, it has a little bit of infection, well, you 
might listen to your doctor. But what happens when the doctor says, 
well, I think we are going to get rid of that hangnail problem. We are 
going to amputate your leg.
  This is what this is about. Those people are trying to amputate our 
legs in the name of getting rid of a hangnail because the Patent Office 
isn't working efficiently. Well, I would suggest that that doctor, if 
he suggests to you that he is going to amputate your leg, either he 
isn't incompetent or he doesn't like you. And you better check and find 
out. But either way, you don't want to follow his advice.
  We are told by those people who want to totally change the patent 
system that these evil inventors, people like Thomas Edison and Cyrus 
McCormick, all of these inventors, the people who invented the drugs 
that have cured polio, these evil inventors, they actually abuse the 
system because they own it for 17 years. No. It has been that 
profitability, it has been that spur, that incentive to create that has 
come up with these miracle cures, that has come up with these machines 
that have made us more competitive. Our workers cannot be more 
competitive with the Chinese or the Indians unless we have the 
technology. If our technologists are going to have all of the product 
of their genius stolen by the Chinese and Indians even before the 
patent is issued, how are we going to compete in the future against 
China and India? No. These people who are inventors, they are not 
abusing our law. They are the heroes. They are American heroes, just 
like the Wright brothers were American heroes. They lead to a better 
way of life.
  These large corporations who exploit people and have no loyalty to 
us, who have armies of lawyers who will steal anything and smash anyone 
who gets in their way, those are the people we have to watch out for. 
Those are the people who are behind this proposed change in our patent 
law. Property rights for the little guy is a good thing. And I don't 
care if the guys in the corporate board rooms don't agree with me on 
that. I know that as a Republican people think, oh, well, he must be 
for business. No, I am for Americans. And I know that today the 
American people are being abused. If it weren't for the American 
people, there wouldn't be any freedom anywhere in the world. Any hope 
for anyone, for mankind and humankind is tied to the willingness of the 
American people, because we care about them.
  Why should we harmonize our laws with the rest of the world off of 
some global vision that some egghead in some university thought up and 
taught to his students 20 years ago who now are out trying to implement 
this global vision?
  Our people are not fighting for a new world order. Our people, when 
they defend this country, are defending our rights and our liberties. 
If we ever lose that, if we ever lose the allegiance of the little guy 
to our country, we have lost everything. Because what it seems like 
here is what we have got going in this country, whether it is patent 
law or whether it is immigration law, is that the elite no longer have 
the allegiance to America's little guys.
  You know, there is a story that goes with this whole issue. It deals 
with a little guy who invented the picture tube, Philo Farnsworth. 
There is a statue to him right down the hallway, a statue here in our 
Nation's Capital to a country hick named Philo Farnsworth. It shows him 
there holding a TV picture tube. You know what? Philo Farnsworth was a 
hick. He had a little training in engineering. He actually figured it 
out.
  RCA, the most powerful company in the United States at that time, 
spent

[[Page 18353]]

what is the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars to try to 
find the secret of a picture wave that you could have so you can have a 
television set and a tube that would capture that. Philo Farnsworth 
figured it out. He wrote RCA. He said, hey, I figured it out. Come on 
over and we will discuss it.
  Sure enough, the head researcher from the labs at RCA showed up at 
Philo Farnsworth's home. Philo Farnsworth went out to the barn and 
showed him everything and how he had done it and how he figured it out. 
He had his notes. The guy took extensive notes and said, We will get 
back to you. Do you know what? RCA spent 20 years trying to steal Philo 
Farnsworth's invention. It went all the way to the Supreme Court. Thank 
God for the United States of America, the little guy, Farnsworth, beat 
RCA, the big corporation. That is why we have a statue to him here. 
That is what America is all about, protecting the rights of the little 
guy to make this a better world.

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