Date: 2011-06-22
Speaker: ZOE LOFGREN (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to get back to the original reason why weve worked so hard on this bill. only to be here at the end of this process with a bill that we cant support. We started with hearings in the 1990s with the Federal Trade Commission and the National Academy of Science. And one of the things they pointed out was that there are more patents than there are inventions. We started focusing in on the abuse of litigation that occurred as well as the needs of the office. My colleague is correct: The Patent Office has a tremendous backlog. and that is a serious concern for inventors and really for the country. The examiners have such an enormous backlog. they cant spend sufficient time reviewing the applicants. This has led to a flood of poorquality patents that were issued over the last decade and a half that I thinkand most believeshould have been denied by the office. These dubious patents do significant damage to particular industries. like the information technology industry. as they can be used by nonpracticing entities to demand rents from legitimate businesses and to interfere with the development of legitimate products. Now. I dont blame the examiners at the PTO. They are working hard. but they dont have enough time to give each application the consideration it deserves. A bill. as approved by the Judiciary Committee. would have helped remedy this problem by making surea lot of people dont realize that the Patent Office doesnt get any taxpayer money. The Patent Office is entirely supported by fees submitted by inventors. So keeping all of those fees that the inventors are paying in the office so that the patents can properly be dealt with in a timely fashion was a key component of this measure. Unfortunately. under the managers amendment. that strong protection is simply gone. And I know. as I said in the past. weve had unanimous votes in the Judiciary Committee. Weve had promises never to do it again. but the diversions have continued. and it is clear that they will continue under the managers amendment provision because it allows the regular process to continue as it has in the past. I have not submitted lists of letters of whos in favor. whos opposed to this bill. Its my understanding that the Realtors Association is. in fact. opposed to the managers amendment. but were not going to vote on these amendments tonight. Were rolling these votes until tomorrow. So we will research that. and we will find the truth of where they are and make that information available to the Members because certainly Realtors are a very valuable part of our Nations economy. I want to talk a little bit as well about whether we can fix the defect on prior art by an amendment that will be offered later in the week by the gentleman from Michigan and the gentleman from California . They propose that the firsttofile patent system that is being promoted to harmonize our system with other countries would not go into effect until the grace period. which is the critical part of the patent system. actually is fixed and harmonized. If the managers amendment is passed. the fatal defect of defining the prior art is disclosures. I dont believe can be fully remedied by this amendment. although I think that this amendment is a good one. and I intend to support it. So I think its very important that the managers amendment be defeated. I would hope that if that happens. that we might have a chance to step back and to fully examine where we are in terms of the prior user rights and the grace period because. as the patent commissioner had said. this is the gold standard. the United States has had the gold standard in patents with this grace period. It would be a shame not just for the Congress but for our country and our future as innovators to lose this genius part of our patent system. I reserve the balance of my time.