United States Patent and Trademark Fee Modernization Act of 2003

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK FEE MODERNIZATION ACT OF 2003 -- (House of Representatives - March 03, 2004)

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from California for allowing this institution to function as it should and to allow those who disagree with this bill an opportunity to speak.

Mr. Chairman, across our country we see the dismantling of jobs and business in this country. This particular bill, H.R. 1561, dismantles the Patent and Trademark Office as we have known it. If one reads article 1, section 8, it says, the Congress shall have the power to secure for inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Throughout the over 200-year history of our country, that has been done through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The bill before us on page 11 reads, the Director can provide that searches be done by commercial entities.

That is not what the Constitution says. That is not the U.S. Patent Office. That is a commercial entity. Yes, searches will be outsourced from the U.S. Patent Office. You could say they would be contracted out. That is not the U.S. Patent Office. We have plenty of examples in this world of copycatting of inventions, of counterfeiting of intellectual property, particularly by the Chinese and by patent thieves and by submarine patents. There are plenty of things going on in this world that contracting out or outsourcing of the Patent Office does not help because you cannot secure the honesty or the integrity of those instrumentalities. And though the bill says business concerns, it does not say corporations, it says business concerns organized under the laws of the United States that indeed can be a foreign corporation, because a foreign corporation operating inside the United States, be it Chinese, Japanese, Bangladeshi,
Indian, whatever, is defined as a U.S. corporation. That is not the Patent and Trademark Office of the United States of
America. Patent holders actually will not know if their search is being outsourced or contracted out and they will not know to whom. And in terms of the fees being charged, the additional tax being put on small inventors and small companies, all this bill has, with all due respect to the Committee on Small Business, is a study. It does not stop those fees and taxes from being imposed. It increases them. How in heaven's name does this make America any more secure?

I might point out to my dear friend from Wisconsin, as good a Badger as he is, that indeed the Japanese patent system and the European patent system are not the American system. We have the protections here, which is why other countries want to file their patents here. We do not want to harmonize with systems unlike ours. We want them to be like us. Why are we doing this? And if a patent search takes a while, that is a good thing. It protects my rights, particularly my rights as a small inventor. So I would say with all due respect to the authors of this legislation, changing the U.S. Patent Office, why? Why dismantle it after over two centuries of success?
I deeply thank the gentleman from California for yielding me this time. At least we had the opportunity to put our views on the record. I would ask my colleagues to vote "no" on H.R. 1561.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio.

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentleman very much for yielding and would just wish to ask him this question. If there are additional staff that will be working directly for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, then why does this bill permit commercial entities to do the review process, which means you are outsourcing or contracting out work that should legitimately be done by the office?

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. The answer to the question is that it speeds up the process. And with the WTO treaty changing the patent term to 20 years from the date of filing, every day that there is a delay in actually determining whether the application results in the patentable invention means that there is one less day of patent protection before that patent expires. So if it takes 8 years for the PTO to act on an application, that means that somebody who has invented something only has got 12 years left. With software technology increasing at such a rapid rate, by the time the PTO acts if we do not do something about it, the invention is going to be practically useless.

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Ms. KAPTUR. If the gentleman could clarify, he has stated then that because of the World Trade Organization, the WTO requirements, this is why we are having to pass this bill?

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. If the gentlewoman from Ohio will refresh her recollection, the WTO treaty was ratified by
Congress. It was urged upon us and signed by President Clinton. I joined the gentlewoman from Ohio in opposing the WTO treaty when it came up in 1994 but we lost on that and the extension or the change in the patent term from the previous 17 years of the date of granting of the patent by the Patent Office was changed to 20 years from the date of filing. The gentlewoman and I voted against it but it is the law and we have to face up to the fact that the longer the PTO delays in issuing a patent, the less time of patent protection there is for an applicant for a patent who succeeds.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Manzullo).

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from California for allowing this institution to function as it should and to allow those who disagree with this bill an opportunity to speak.

Mr. Chairman, across our country we see the dismantling of jobs and business in this country. This particular bill, H.R. 1561, dismantles the Patent and Trademark Office as we have known it. If one reads article 1, section 8, it says, the Congress shall have the power to secure for inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Throughout the over 200-year history of our country, that has been done through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The bill before us on page 11 reads, the Director can provide that searches be done by commercial entities.

That is not what the Constitution says. That is not the U.S. Patent Office. That is a commercial entity. Yes, searches will be outsourced from the U.S. Patent Office. You could say they would be contracted out. That is not the U.S. Patent Office. We have plenty of examples in this world of copycatting of inventions, of counterfeiting of intellectual property, particularly by the Chinese and by patent thieves and by submarine patents. There are plenty of things going on in this world that contracting out or outsourcing of the Patent Office does not help because you cannot secure the honesty or the integrity of those instrumentalities. And though the bill says business concerns, it does not say corporations, it says business concerns organized under the laws of the United States that indeed can be a foreign corporation, because a foreign corporation operating inside the United States, be it Chinese, Japanese, Bangladeshi,
Indian, whatever, is defined as a U.S. corporation. That is not the Patent and Trademark Office of the United States of
America. Patent holders actually will not know if their search is being outsourced or contracted out and they will not know to whom. And in terms of the fees being charged, the additional tax being put on small inventors and small companies, all this bill has, with all due respect to the Committee on Small Business, is a study. It does not stop those fees and taxes from being imposed. It increases them. How in heaven's name does this make America any more secure?

I might point out to my dear friend from Wisconsin, as good a Badger as he is, that indeed the Japanese patent system and the European patent system are not the American system. We have the protections here, which is why other countries want to file their patents here. We do not want to harmonize with systems unlike ours. We want them to be like us. Why are we doing this? And if a patent search takes a while, that is a good thing. It protects my rights, particularly my rights as a small inventor. So I would say with all due respect to the authors of this legislation, changing the U.S. Patent Office, why? Why dismantle it after over two centuries of success?
I deeply thank the gentleman from California for yielding me this time. At least we had the opportunity to put our views on the record. I would ask my colleagues to vote "no" on H.R. 1561.

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