OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

American Invents Act

Floor Speech

Date: June 23, 2011
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Technology and Communication

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Ms. ZOE LOFGREN of California. Madam Chair, I rise in support of the Sensenbrenner amendment. Actually, I don't agree that first-to-file is unconstitutional, and I, in general, am not opposed to the idea of first-to-file.

But, unfortunately, the bill is flawed, and you cannot have first-to-file without robust prior-user rights and a broad prior-user rights used in the grace period. We don't have that in this bill.

And so what we will have are established businesses having to either reveal trade secrets or be held up, have to license their own trade secrets. For startups this is a very serious problem. And coming from Silicon Valley, I'll tell you I've heard from a lot of startups and the venture world that supports them that this provision is defective.

There were other remedies. They were not adopted. All we can do now is
to strike the first-to-file provision. I do that without any reluctance. It will serve our economy best. And I thank the gentleman for offering his amendment.

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