American Patent Law

Floor Speech

AMERICAN PATENT LAW -- (House of Representatives - September 05, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I would thank the fine gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) for securing the special order time this evening and join him in his special order concerning the patent bill that will be coming up later in the week.

I share his concern that this bill is not reform, and with what is happening across our country with the outsourcing of jobs, now is not the time to weaken U.S. patent protection, which is a constitutional protection going back to the founding of our Republic.

Congressman Rohrabacher has gone through a lot of the technicalities of what is involved in this bill that is coming before us. Let me just say that there was a magazine article published back in June by Manufacturing and Technology News in their June 29, 2007 issue. Viewers can go to www.manufacturingnews.com and pick it up. It was written by Dr. Pat Choate. What I find particularly compelling about this article is it gets into who actually is driving this bill and why is this bill coming at us, a bill that will weaken protections for U.S. inventors, or those that file in our country, at a time when we were hemorrhaging jobs, certainly in the manufacturing sector, but not just that sector, and at a time when our trade deficit is now close to $1 trillion a year, a time when our budget deficit and our trade deficit is so high that the Federal Reserve a week ago had to resort to creating money, printing money and shoving it into our financial system to try to prop it up.

What is happening? Why would this bill be coming up now? We know that the forces that are driving this bill are very large corporations, transnational corporations, the very ones that are moving our jobs offshore. And what they are about is that sometimes those very big companies get sued because they infringe on other people's patents. They then go to court and lose, and they are forced to pay fines. In response, because they don't like that, they are financing an expensive lobbying propaganda and legal campaign to weaken our patent laws.

They are using the wrong measure. What they should do is stop infringing on other people's patents and not try to change the whole patent system as a solution to their predicament. Let me just place a number on the record that is quoted in this article. And I don't know that the gentleman has done this yet this evening, but between 1993 and 2005, four of these big companies paid out more than $3.5 billion in patent settlements. But in the same period, their earnings were more than $1.4 trillion, making their patent settlements only about one-quarter of 1 percent of their revenues. Now they wish to reduce even those costs, not by changing their obviously unfair and often illegal business practices, but by persuading Congress and also the Supreme Court to weaken U.S. patent protections which have been guaranteed since the founding of the Republic. They have tried to convince Congress that there is some type of litigation crisis. As the gentleman has just properly outlined, there is no litigation crisis in the courts relating to patents.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. There are 102 cases over a year, which is basically what one judge sees. There is no litigation crisis. But again, as you are aware, what we have here is they are trying to use that as cover to try to do something else, because the bill is not aimed at correcting that. The bill is aimed at permitting these large companies to take, at will, from America's inventors.

Ms. KAPTUR. We know how much they have been taking in other ways, taking health benefits away from our people, taking good wages away from our people, literally taking jobs and transporting them someplace else. And our patent system has been at the basis of the creativity of this country. It is a great, great system

By the way, I will say for the record, there is a website one can go to, www.uscourts.gov/caseload2006. contents.html. And on that site, you can look at these various cases to see that the courts aren't overloaded. The courts aren't saying they are overloaded in terms of suits relating to patents. But one of the parts of the bill that truly, truly concerns me, and why I shall vote against it, is that these very large transnational corporations want to change the longstanding practice of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office of granting a patent to the person who actually invented it. We call it ``first to invent.'' They want to change it to ``first to file.'' In other words, if they get the system they want, which means that an inventor takes their brilliant idea to the Patent and Trademark Office, even before it is approved, it has to be posted on a Web site, and somebody in China or somebody in Tokyo can take that, file it in their country, and they say, ``grant the patent to the first to file.'' Not the first to invent.

We protect individuals in this country. We protect that intellectual capital. To even suggest that we should go to a system that the gentleman has said that exists in Europe, for example, that is not the American system. Before the American system of economics got captured by these globalists who are controlling Wall Street and some of these big decisions that are hollowing out communities across this country, we had a country that respected the Constitution and the right of the inventor. You. The person who actually created the idea, whether you are a musician, whether you are an electronics expert, whether you are an automotive expert, whether you make a decent paper towel hanger for your kitchen, if you have a better idea, our legal system protects you against the large companies and the small.

[Time: 20:00]

Ms. KAPTUR. You have a right to your idea.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. The fundamental rules that were laid down 200

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years ago on the very subject, for example, not just the confidentiality, which they are trying to destroy, but the subject that you brought up is first to file, versus the concept that we had in our system for over 200 years, which is that we respect the person who is the first to invent.

Inventors have told me over and over again that if we change our system, and, by the way, in Europe and Japan that is the way their systems are, and, of course, they don't protect the little guy. Their systems were designed at a time when they weren't talking about individual rights, but were trying to protect corporate interest in their country.

But first to file would flood our system with patent applications day after day after day. The large corporations who can afford to make a new filing every time there is a little step forward, you would end up flooding the system, as compared to what it is today. Talk about delays in the patent system. It would have a horrible impact.

In fact, some of the other things that they are suggesting also in terms of these, on June 7th, 2007, a letter to Congress from Chief Judge Paul Michael of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the U.S. Federal Circuit Court warned Congress that the learning curve for all of these changes that they are talking about, especially the first to file and the various changes in the standards, will result in additional court delays that would be severe and would add additional attorneys fees and costs.

So that is what we have. In the name of trying to prevent a glut, which they say now is flooding our courts, when there are only 102 cases, they are going to create changes that will flood our courts and add dramatically to the cost for an individual inventor.

Ms. KAPTUR. If the gentleman would be kind enough to yield to me again, it would force our inventors to defend themselves in a way that they don't have to today to go through all these additional bureaucratic hurdles, because under the current system we protect your idea, we protect your right as an inventor, no matter how small you are.

In fact, if you look at the patents filed every day, which I look at as the seed capital of the future of this economy, a third of those patent applications are from very small inventors. They are from universities. We see every day major counterfeiters around the world taking our ideas and doing knockoffs. They actually come to your district, Congressman Rohrabacher, before they come to mine, because you have got that port down there in Southern California.

But we know how counterfeiting occurs and what the potential is in other places to cheat, and we have protections for our people against that.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If I might add, the protections we have had, there are penalties that companies will pay, and you mentioned that those large corporations paid $2 billion, or I forget the exact figure you used, in terms of damages. Well, this bill would reduce the amount of damages that can be collected from a patent owner, an inventor who has been violated by an infringer.

If a company steals someone's nice idea and does not pay them for it and starts using it, especially foreign companies, this bill actually reduces the amount of money that can be expected by changing the criteria of how you can assess damages. What you will end up with is it won't be worthwhile for the inventor to have to pay the lawyers and go after these infringers, and our inventors will be high and dry, the technology that they do invent will go overseas, so they will cease to invent.

Who is going to be worse off? Everybody is going to be worse off.

Ms. KAPTUR. It would seem to me that at this point in our country we would be wanting to encourage innovation here in the United States. We want to be rewarding those people who are creating the future, whether it is in agriculture, whether it is in transportation, whether it is in medical care.

We have all seen the companies in our district where jobs are growing, and they begin with invention, they begin with creativity guaranteed by our Constitution. Why would we make it more difficult for them in the courts? Why would we make it easier for those who want to take their idea or get a sneak preview of their idea before their patent is granted? Why would we want to give them greater advantage in this struggle for jobs in America? It is beyond me. But I understand power and I understand the power of these companies.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. It is easy to understand why it is going on, because the bill that is coming forward on Friday, H.R. 1908, that bill is designed not to help American competitiveness. That bill is not designed to protect the property rights of inventors. That bill is totally designed for the purpose of weakening the system for the American inventor and protecting the ability of the big guys, the guys who are shipping the jobs to China already, that is how much they care about us, to protect their ability to use technology and to steal it without having to pay for it. That is the purpose. It weakens it. The whole bill is designed to weaken the patent system.

As I have used the example of the immigration bill before, where people didn't want to talk about amnesty, everybody knows that was the real purpose. They used the word ``comprehensive'' to cover up that and not to debate amnesty.

This bill, the ``comprehensive reform bill,'' is designed to weaken the system, but they are using ``reform'' as a word to make it sound like they are trying to improve things.

Let us note the reason. If you ask these big companies and the people proposing this why we have to do it, they are not going to tell you we are doing it for the big guys. We are doing it because the financial industry and the electronics industry, they don't want to pay royalties, and they do their manufacturing overseas, so they don't care about the American worker anyway. They are not going to say that. What they are going to say is we need to harmonize all of our laws dealing with economics. We need to get up with the rest of the world. It is called harmonization. We heard that 10 years ago. We have to harmonize our law with the rest of the world.

We have had the strongest protection for patent rights of any country in the world since our country's founding, and it has served us well. Now they want to harmonize it with the rest of the world by lowering our standards, by lowering our protection.

If we did that with other freedoms, the freedom of religion, the freedom of speech, there would be a revolution in our country, because if we want to push for all countries to have one standard, well, they should be increasing their standards to meet our level of protection of rights, not having us lower the protection that we have for our individual citizens.

Ms. KAPTUR. Yes. And you know at this time in this country, where it is hard to find a good paying job, it is really very hard, some of these companies that are trying to weaken our patent system actually pay their staffs less than companies that are in communities like I represent, where people earn a living wage.

These companies also outsource a lot of jobs related to component manufacture and so forth. I find it interesting that they have so much power and they have so much influence that now they are trying to, in a way, take away the potential for districts like mine to reinvent themselves by protecting those who are creating new ideas. In fact, they want to get rid of this opt-out provision, where if you are a small inventor and you file as first-to-invent at the Patent Office, you have a choice whether you want foreign entities to be able to see that invention now. They have this opt-out provision, where you protect yourself before you are able to get the approval and try to get the money to manufacture or provide the service that you want to provide.

This will make it very difficult. About half of the inventions that we have come from small businesses, universities and independent inventors who select that opt-out provision.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Right, because they don't want the foreign interests to have all that information even before they get issued the patent.

Ms. KAPTUR. Absolutely. I don't think the average American understands how hard it is to get the money to start up your company. Once you have filed and gotten the patent itself, it is not easy if you are a small

inventor. Why would you want to reveal that abroad?

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. Clearly, when we are talking about harmonizing our laws with the rest of the world, this is not an excuse to dramatically bring down the rights that have been enjoyed, the protections our people have enjoyed, and which have assured America's prosperity and the security of our people.

In fact, let's take a look at these huge electronics corporations and huge financial interests that are pushing H.R. 1908. These are the same companies that build their manufacturing units in China and have built up the economy of China so they can outcompete Americans. These are the same companies that have actually worked with a despotic gangster regime in Beijing so that their computers can be used to help track down political dissidents.

They tell us, well, we have to improve the economy of China in order to have them evolve into a more peaceful and more Democratic country. That is baloney. What they are doing over there is getting a quick profit. They are sitting over there getting their blood money at a 25 percent profit a year, when if they would have the same projects and have the same manufacturing in the United States, perhaps they would only make a 5 or 10 percent profit.

What it is, they have no loyalty to American ideals and they don't have a loyalty to the American worker. Without American working people standing up for these principles, these big companies would have nothing. We would live in a world that would be awash with tyrants, if it wasn't for the American people who defend liberty and justice throughout the world.

But yet these corporations take all of them for granted, just like they take for granted these small inventors. They look at them as nerds. These big executives, who will live in gated communities and go to the country clubs, they look at these inventors as nerds. The creative types are just the creative types. We have seen it over and over again.

That is the way they treat the American people as well, with arrogance and with a total lack of consideration. They go over and they invest in China, when they should be giving jobs, decent paying jobs, to the American people. But their profit margin would be a little less.

By the way, that profit margin that we are talking about, this isn't a profit margin that goes just to their stockholders. We are talking about big corporate billionaires who give themselves huge corporate salaries. And what are they doing? They are putting American workers out of work and sending it over to China.

This bill is their bill. H.R. 1908 will permit them to not only take the jobs to China, but to take the technology that is invented in our country to China to outcompete the workers here that are left.

Ms. KAPTUR. As a member of the Defense Subcommittee, the gentleman might be surprised to learn that today I spent part of my day learning that the U.S. Department of Defense main contract for procurement of tires for our vehicles, defense vehicles, is from a foreign company. And we have very few tire manufacturers left in the United States of America.

I couldn't believe it. The company that is favored, Michelin, is building a facility in China to manufacture tires. I thought, wait a minute. What about Akron, Ohio? What about North Carolina? What about Kansas? What about other places where we make tires in this country? How is it possible that the Department of Defense signs a contract for tires with a foreign company? I have got nothing against Michelin, but what about American jobs and technology?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. The gentlewoman is right on target. What you have to do to understand how evil that is is realize that the Chinese couldn't have built that tire company because they did not have the equipment to do it. We have a major corporation from the United States sending our technology and our equipment over there, where American workers in the past would be able to outproduce low-paid Chinese workers because we had the technology. Our corporate leaders now have sent jobs over there by giving them the technology they need to outcompete American workers.

I will have to say we have a little disagreement on trade in terms of democratic countries, because I don't see anything wrong with trading with democratic countries. What we are referring to right now is something we both totally agree on, how can we have free trade with despotic regimes like China and other dictatorships around the world, where they keep their own people in abject poverty, and we are going to let our corporations take our technology over there, take even our investment there? A lot of times it is done with government-guaranteed loans from our government.

So this is all part of an overall problem, not a problem, but a threat to the American people, and this is a new wrinkle. In H.R. 1908, this is just the part where they are going to take the technology that is invented here immediately over and let their companies overseas steal it and use if, and then say to the inventors, go ahead and sue us. Try to get it.

[Time: 20:15]

Ms. KAPTUR. I share the gentleman's value of free trade among free people, and I also believe it should be a two-way street. So when the United States has a trade imbalance with any country of over $10 billion each of three consecutive years, I think we should go back and see what is wrong with that agreement. I think it ought to be assessed by the administration. I think we should find out what is going wrong.

We are not doing that anywhere on the globe. Whether it is China or whether it is Mexico, we are falling into deeper and deeper debt.

I think the measure is a real measure, not just political, but also the bottom line. Are we winning or losing in that trade relationship? If we are losing in that trade relationship, we ought to fix it.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. One thing we know is that today's corporations are far different than in the past. We have corporations that are basically multinational corporations. Yeah, American citizens may lead up these corporations, but they consider themselves to be the head of a huge multinational organization, and their loyalty isn't to the people of the United States, it is to, supposedly, the corporate structure which, of course, could mean that they put thousands of Americans out of work and not give it even a second thought.

We cannot rely on these corporate elites to make the policy that will determine the future of our country. And that is what is happening here. The corporate elite, basically the high-tech billionaires, have come around and written H.R. 1908, and it will be a disaster for the American people if we let this go by because in the long term it will eliminate our technological edge over our competitors.

Ms. KAPTUR. The gentleman was talking about the cheating that is done by many companies globally, and one of the reasons I don't care for the bill that is going to be brought before us is right now there are at least 15 different factors that a court can weigh in assessing fines on companies that cheat, that infringe on someone else's patent. What happens under this bill is these 15 factors that the courts like because it helps them make a judgment in whatever the particulars of the case might be, are reduced to one and the other 14 factors don't really have to be weighed. So there is a significant change in this legislation that would heavily impact on what the courts can do and how they look at a given case.

I will submit this article for the Record that talks about Bose's port tube technology being infringed on by JBL as an example of what is happening.
[From Manufacturing & Technology News, June 29, 2007]

Covering Innovation, Globalization and Industrial Competitiveness

PATENT ``REFORM'' IS ANYTHING BUT
(By Pat Choate)

Ironically, Congress is now threatening China with harsh remedies if it does not quickly stiffen its patent protections, even as Congress marks up legislation that will dramatically weaken U.S. patent protections. This bill is the Patent Reform Act of 2007.

This schizophrenic policy is being driven by a group of ``Big Tech'' transnational corporations that repeatedly infringe the patents of others, get sued, lose in court and are then forced to pay billions of dollars in penalties. Now, in response, they are financing an expensive lobbying, propaganda and legal

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campaign to weaken U.S. patent laws by passing this Patent ``Reform'' Act. They cleverly call themselves The Coalition for Patent Fairness (CPF); included are large transnational corporations such as Adobe, Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, eBay, Lenovo, Dell and Oracle.

During the period 1993-2005, four of the CPF companies paid out more than $3.5 billion in patent settlements. In the same period, their combined revenues were $1.4 trillion, making their patent settlements only about one-quarter of one percent of their revenues. Now, they wish to reduce even those costs, not by changing their obviously unfair, and often illegal, business practices, but by persuading Congress, and also the Supreme Court, to weaken U.S. patent protections.

These corporations have convinced many members of Congress and many editorial writers that the U.S. patent system is badly broken and that it requires a major legislative overhaul. Supposedly, they say, the U.S. is in the midst of a ``litigation crisis'' where responsible corporations (CPF members) are being penalized by unworthy lawsuits. And, also supposedly, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is issuing massive numbers of unworthy patents that are being used in lawsuits against innovative companies (again, CPF members).

The ``litigation crisis'' and ``unworthy patents'' allegations simply do not hold up under examination.

The real facts of the so-called litigation crisis are that for the past two decades the number of patent lawsuits commenced annually has been about 1.5 percent of all patents granted. In 2006, it was 1.47 percent. This is business as usual. Most patent lawsuits, moreover, settle before trial. In 1979, some 79 percent of patent cases settled before trial, while in 2004 almost 86 percent did. Matters are actually improving.

Also, the U.S. has few patent trials: For instance, in 2001 only 76 patent lawsuits were tried and only 102 went to trial in 2006. By no measure can 102 patent trials be considered a national litigation crisis. The annual report of Federal Judicial Caseload Statistics, which is on the Internet, provides the factual antidote to false claims of a litigation crisis (www.uscourts.gov/caseload2006/contentsÐ.html).

As to the massive numbers of ``unworthy patents'' argument, the real-world test is how many patents are challenged and the outcome of those challenges. Between 1981 and 2006 the USPTO issued more than 3.1 million patents. In that period, 8,600 were challenged at the Patent Office through inter partes and ex parte reexaminations. The number challenged amounts to less than three-tenths of one percent. Of those challenged, about 74 percent resulted in claims narrowed or cancelled. In addition, almost 60 percent of the relatively few patents challenged in a court trial are sustained.

My point is that the USPTO's work is certainly not perfect, but the Patent Office is also not pouring out a stream of bad patents.

If there are no patent ``litigation crisis'' and no patent ``quality crisis,'' what is the real purpose of the Patent Reform Act of 2007 legislation before Congress?

A main goal is to legislate changes that will reduce penalties paid by infringers. Under existing law, a patent holder who is infringed upon is entitled to damages adequate to compensate for infringement, but in no event less than a reasonable royalty. The courts now consider a list of 15 factors in that calculation, including apportioning the part of the realizable profit created by the infringed invention versus other factors such as the manufacturing process, promotion, sales or other patents owned by the infringer.

Under this bill, however, Congress mandates that the court ``ensure that a reasonable royalty is applied only to the economic value properly attributable to the patent's special contribution over the prior art'' while only allowing the consideration of the other 14 factors. The bill goes on to require that the court subtract from the analysis ``the economic value properly attributable to the prior art, and other features or improvements, whether or not patented that contribute economic value to the infringing product or service.'' Think of this as a big finger on the scales of justice that favors the infringer.

Often, the infringed component is only one of dozens of parts and contributions that make up the product, but that component may be the very thing that makes the product sell.

JBL infringed Bose's patented port tube technology, for instance, which gives Bose speakers their distinctive clarity. Bose's technology vastly improved the sound of the JBL speakers and drove JBL's sales. Bose sued and won. JBL wanted the royalty determination based on the small value of a cheaply made, plastic port tube. The federal court, however, determined that Bose's technology is what drove JBL's sales and set the damages on the value of the entire speaker system. If the damages were apportioned only to the cost of making the port tube, Bose would have received a tiny fraction of what its invention was worth. If JBL were allowed to subtract the value of all prior art in the damage calculation, which this legislation would allow, Bose would likely have gotten almost zero.

Cutting the damages paid by infringers is the goal of the many serial infringers supporting this provision.

Chief Judge Paul R. Michel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit advised Congress in a letter dated June 7, 2007, that the current law on apportionment is stable, works well and is understood by litigators and judges, and that the new proposal would be a radical change that would cause great chaos in the legal system. He noted that this change would require a massive damage trial in every case and a new kind of costly macroeconomic analysis. ``Resulting additional court delays would be severe,'' he wrote, ``as would additional attorneys' fees and costs.'' I think that we can mark him down as opposed.

One other pernicious result is this ``primary factor'' apportionment provision would actually encourage more infringement. Rather than negotiate with a patent owner and pay for use of an innovation, many infringers would simply go ahead and use it, pay nothing and, if caught and proceeded against, then pay a small royalty payment eventually set by a federal judge.

If Congress enacts this provision, it is sanctioning the ``taking'' of a patent owner's property and drastically reducing the price, if anything, an infringer must pay. Think of it as ``self-licensing'' someone else's patent. During the life of a patent, copyright or trademark, there is no difference between real property and intellectual property. A patent belongs to someone. Often it has great value. The owners should decide how it is used and the terms of that use, not the infringers.

A second goal of the proposed legislation is to force the USPTO to publish on the Internet all patent applications 18 months after the date they are filed. Since most patent applications now take an average 31 months to process, the Big Tech corporations that are sponsoring this legislation would get an advanced peek at an applicant's secrets more than a year before the inventor has patent protection, that is, if the patent is even granted, which for half of all applications, it is not. If an infringer took those secrets to China or India or anywhere where patent protection is lax, as many would, the inventor's only recourse would be to go to those countries and file a lawsuit. Few small companies, universities and inventors can afford this.

Foreign pirates find this mandatory publication provision particularly useful. For China, South Korea and many other nations, the USPTO's computer in Arlington, Va., is their primary source of R&D. Many foreign corporations and governments fill a room with computers, engineers and fast Internet connections and then task them with finding new technologies in unprotected U.S. patent applications. The U.S. isn't the only country with this problem; the Japanese Patent Office reports their computers get 17,000 hits per day from China and 55,000 hits per day from South Korea.

When Congress first enacted this 18-month publication requirement in 1999 it also created a loophole. Inventors can opt-out of having their applications published if they agree not to file for any foreign patents. About half of all applications from small businesses, universities and independent inventors select to opt-out. The proposed bill would eliminate this opt-out choice.

The Big Tech corporations also want Congress to change the long-standing practice of the U.S. Patent Office of granting a patent to the first-person-to-invent to the practice used in Europe, Japan, China and elsewhere where the patent goes to the first-person-to-file the patent application.

A firt-to-file system strongly favors big corporations, who have the resources to track every aspect of an invention and file boxes and boxes of materials to support their claims, over small businesses, independent inventors and universities, who do not.

Equally important, this change of systems would create chaos at the USPTO and greatly contribute to the slowing of U.S. innovation. The USPTO would have to create numerous new forms and procedures and retrain its thousands of patent examiners and administrative people, even as it works down a backlog of 750,000 applications. All inventors, companies, patent lawyers and federal judges in the U.S. would be forced to learn this new system, its procedures and rules.

The turmoil created by this shift in the already beleaguered USPTO would guarantee a logjam there--one far greater than the passport backlog fiasco now underway at the State Department.

Incongruously, this legislation also proposes to solve America's supposed patent ``litigation crisis'' by creating a new forum for more litigation. This proposed ``post grant'' opposition process provides an infringer a lowcost means to challenge the very patent it is infringing and allows it to do so over the entire 20 year life of the patent at a lower burden of proof than required in a federal court.

Europe has the very system that Congress is being asked to copy. It is a litigation heaven for the patent bar. The annual European Patent Office (EPO) challenge rate was 5.4 percent of granted patents in 2005. The combination of all USPTO ex parte and inter partes challenges, all interference cases, plus all patent lawsuits commenced calculated as per the number of patents granted produces a comparable U.S. challenge rate of 1.8 percent. The EOP challenge rate is three times that of the United States and that does not count any patent lawsuits in Europe.

Japan dropped this system in 2004 because it created too many lawsuits. Of the many

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bad ideas in this legislation, this post grant litigation process is probably the worst.

The principal victims of these and other Patent Reform Act of 2007 proposals will be small entity inventors--small businesses, individual inventors, universities and non-profit research organizations. Their patents are often the greatest, if not only, assets they hold. Most often, they need ownership of an unchallenged patent in order to get financing to actually develop it. And, when their patent secrets are stolen and used by larger infringers, they are generally unable to finance a lawsuit, particularly if the infringer operates outside the United States.

Yet, it is small entity inventors who file almost 30 percent of all U.S.-origin patent applications and receive 31 percent of all patents granted. Unlike the Big Tech companies, most of these innovators keep their R&D and production in the U.S. They are vital to America's future. But they are fragile. Special consideration of their situation and needs is in the nation's best interest.

Fortunately, many U.S. groups and organizations oppose the Patent Reform Act of 2007. Included are the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Business and Industrial Council, more than 450 venture capital firms, the Big Ten universities, plus dozens of other organizations. The Department of Commerce and the USPTO have written Congress that they do not support eliminating the 18-month opt-out rule, changing to a first-to-file system, altering the apportionment provision or creating a new litigation forum. Unfortunately, all this opposition has mattered little so far and this dangerous legislation is still moving forth in the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.

Each Member of Congress needs to closely examine the Patent Reform Act of 2007 for it will deeply affect every state, every community and every congressional district. We face a historic economic challenge in the global economy. Now is the time for Congress to strengthen U.S. patent protections rather than weaken them.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. People need to know that H.R. 1908 will be coming to the floor on Friday. I call it the ``Steal America's Technology Act,'' and we need to defeat this bill. We need to have the support of the public and of our colleagues, and we are asking for that support today.

I would like to close with one story. It is a story of a statue of a man downstairs. If someone is going through the Capitol, he needs to look at the statue. There are many statues here, but it is a statue of a man named Philo Farnsworth. He was the personification of an individual inventor. He discovered, with his creative genius, the picture tube, the secret that created the picture tube for television. RCA had spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to find that secret. Philo Farnsworth made the mistake of trusting David Sarnoff, the head of RCA, with the secret, thinking we are going to work together to develop this for all humankind.

Sarnoff immediately cut off all communications with this man and tried to steal this invention, claiming credit for RCA itself. For 20 years, poor Philo Farnsworth, the personification of the little guy, was being beaten down by David Sarnoff because he didn't want to pay the royalties or give the credit to this one little guy, this one lone American.

That case went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court, God bless America, sided with the little guy, sided with Philo Farnsworth and reaffirmed that we are talking about rights that are guaranteed by our Constitution for all our citizens, the big guys and the little guys.

This bill, H.R. 1908, is a big guys' bill designed by the big guys to steal from the little guys and in the long run it will hurt all Americans.

I proudly stand by Marcy Kaptur and Mr. Manzullo and others who will be leading, helping us fight this back on Friday. We need everyone's support. We need all constituents to talk to their Congressman on this issue.

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentleman for yielding me time this evening, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the patent bill coming up on Friday. Don't weaken U.S. patent protections that are based on our Constitution. Give our inventors and their creativity a chance to flourish for the next generation.

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