But critics worry that the change would open the door to their invention secrets being stolen and commercialized by others. The bill recently passed the House, and its companion legislation was the topic of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday. Schlafly says the legislation is the most significant before Congress this session and hopes to testify against the proposed changes. She blames an alliance among the Clinton administration, large corporations and the Japanese who sought some of the changes to bring U.S. law more in line with other industrialized countries. It's collusion between the Japanese and multinationals who want to steal the rights of independent inventors.
Current law prohibits publication until a patent is assigned.
That can take several years, giving an inventor time to find financing to produce and market an idea. So the minute the Japanese or some ill-motivated big company in this country sees our disclosure in 18 months, they jump right in the market long before the little guy can get his company going. . . . That's when a shrewd applicant deliberately drags out his secret application, quietly watching others unwittingly develop his technology, then surfaces to procure his patent and demand big royalty fees. Critics of the legislation say there have been fewer than 500 cases of submarine patents out of more than 2 million patents issued to date. They are indeed a serious problem.