Authorizing Pilot Program For Patent Cases

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to thank my partner in this bill, Adam Schiff. For three Congresses in a row, we have worked together and enjoyed a luxury of riches. The bill passes unanimously on suspension, only to be not quite broad enough to appeal to some people in the Senate. I think many of those questions were worked out by agreement in the last Congress, and I believe we have a real chance of moving this bill into law in this Congress.

I thank Mr. Johnson and the ranking member, Howard Coble, for both being cosponsors of this bill. I believe we have made some technical adjustments that will inspire not just the three districts of California, but also Massachusetts, New Jersey and some of the other major areas in which these types of legislation have run into a lot of problems, particularly the fact that we have amended the bill to support those jurisdictions which adopt local rules even if they would otherwise not be eligible that would allow for this type of specialization.

On that word, I want to make sure that everyone in the Congress understands, on both sides of the dome, that when we say specialization, we are not trying to create a specialty court; just the opposite. We are trying to save the district court as we know it. I have had a number of patents properly adjudicated both as a defendant and as a plaintiff, and what I have discovered is that the judges, given the tools at the district court level and given the opportunity to practice more frequently, or at least having at least one judge who has practiced more frequently, they will adjudicate these cases properly. They will make good Markman decisions, and they will in fact understand the nuances of patent. Without that expertise lying in each of the district courts, particularly the large ones, we undoubtedly will continue to have cases which get ping-ponged around and which get decided, unfortunately, incorrectly the first time and only decided correctly after they have come back from the Fed circuit.

So as many have called for the creation of a specialty court similar to the appellate court, the Fed circuit, we are trying here through this patent pilot to do just the opposite: to retain at the district court closest to the people the opportunity to have their patents heard, but to provide them the additional tools necessary to do it, and as was said very kindly by both Mr. Schiff and Mr. Johnson, to give them the frequency of those judges who would like to have that frequency of doing more than one case every seven years. So with that, I again urge passage of this bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source