Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1561 United States Patent and Trademark Fee Modernization Act of 2003

PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 1561, UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK FEE MODERNIZATION ACT OF 2003 -- (House of Representatives - March 03, 2004)

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to strongly oppose this bill, H.R. 1561, and I do so because it is based on our good old Constitution, which says the Congress shall have power to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries, and from the very founding of the republic that knowledge has been housed in the U.S. Patent Office where inventors around our country had confidence that those inventions belonged to them, protected by the Constitution of our Nation. So important patents are listed, patents inventors, congressional protection.

Today, we have a bill before us, H.R. 1561, that really is another episode in the outsourcing of American jobs. Yes, the outsourcing craze continues. It is like a virus that cannot be stopped. The American people cannot understand why their officials in Washington do not step in and put an end to this nonsense, but guess what, now the Federal Government is getting into the act and the outsourcing of jobs from our government, in this case the U.S. Patent Office, has infected the heart of American ingenuity.

Mr. Speaker, the bill before us authorizes the Patent and Trademark Office to outsource work. There is some palliative, feel-good language about companies being organized under the laws of the United States in the bill, but under U.S. law Honda is a U.S. company, Toshiba is a U.S. company. Saudi companies, if they operate on U.S. soils, are U.S. companies. That does not give me a lot of comfort. This is an insult to the entrepreneurs and inventors of this country.
As someone who comes from the State of Ohio, home of Thomas Edison and Charles Kettering, the thought of outsourcing patent application reviews from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is inconceivable. One might think that with this outsourcing, well, the price is going to go down to inventors. Are they going to get anything out of this? That is the way the free trade fundamentalists try to tell the story, send the work overseas if it can be done, send it out of the government, but guess what. They are going to raise the cost to patent holders. So the same old bankrupt theory is at work.

Patent application reviews will be outsourced, but the price to the small inventor or the small entrepreneur would not decrease. In fact, they put an additional fee, an additional tax on them. Currently, a small entity pays $385. The proposed fee would be $675 with an e-file and $750 without an e-file. Total fees for the life of a patent currently are $4,160, which is a lot of money for a small inventor. The proposed fee with an e-file would raise it to $4,875.
Call it what you want, fee increase, user fee adjustment, search fee. I will tell my colleagues what it really is. It is another tax, and a tough one, on the very people who are trying to invent America's future, the very people on whom we are counting for the intellectual moxie to fuel the information-based economy or knowledge-based economy that the experts say are supposed to lead us out of the doldrums that this economy is in.

The people in this country who tinker with objects and machines and ideas, why should they be taxed and why should we want to outsource anything from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office?

If my colleagues vote for this bill, they are voting for a tax increase, and a rather large increase at that, on the best and brightest minds of our country. It is bad enough they want to outsource such an important function such as patent application search and examination. This is so important that it still remains right here in the Constitution of our country, and now we are talking about outsourcing constitutional responsibility. That in itself is an outrage, but to raise taxes on our inventors and our bright minds actually, in this environment, verges on insanity.

Where does it stop? Where does it stop? I urge my colleagues to vote against H.R. 1561.

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Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?

Ms. KAPTUR. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, this is a very important point, and I respect my dear colleague from California (Mr. Berman), but the facts are we are outsourcing patent review procedures from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. In other words, it is going to go to private companies, not the government of the United States, protected by what the
Constitution demands. It is going to be outsourced to companies.

The question is what is a U.S. company? If we look into the law, a U.S. company operating within the boundaries of the United States, even if it is Honda Motor Corporation, is a U.S. company. Foreign corporations operating within the
United States are defined as U.S. corporations because they operate within our soil.

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But they are not U.S. corporations, because their profits are booked back to their home country. So I have a real problem with this.

Number one, we should not be outsourcing the jobs from the Patent Office. That is the most important line that we are breaching here. Never before in the history of this country has this been done. It has never been done. And then we are saying, well, you know, it will be a U.S. company. But then look to the law. How do we define what a U.S. company is? Any company operating within the boundaries of the United States? It could be Honda, it could be Toshiba, it could be Daemler, it could be any company.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?

Ms. KAPTUR. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I take the gentlewoman's point about U.S. companies and who might be called a U.S. company. I simply wanted to point out that the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary has a manager's amendment that will not simply limit this to U.S. companies, but limit it to searches only by companies employing U.S. citizens to perform the searches. So there is that as an additional element.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, and I thank the gentleman from California for those comments, but it is interesting because our submarine technology happened to end up in the hands of the former Soviet Union through a subsidiary of a company operating here and also in Europe. It does not matter if U.S. citizens are in those jobs; what matters is who owns the company. And beyond that, why should we be outsourcing anything from the Patent and Trademark Office?

I totally oppose this bill. At least I want on the record that there was one Member standing to say that the constitutional protections to America's patent holders and inventors should not be breached. It has been working. Why change it?

ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaHood). The Chair would appreciate Members' abiding by the time limits.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. All time has expired. Without objection, the previous question is ordered.
There was no objection.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the resolution.
The resolution was agreed to.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.