Dana Rohrabacher

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to alert my colleagues and to alert the American people that a bill is being marked up in the Committee on the Judiciary this coming Thursday, H.R. 9. This bill is a grave threat to the rights of the American people to own the intellectual property rights that they have created with their own hard work and their own innovative skills. The bill that is being marked up is called, in fact, the Innovation Act. It is one of the worst misnomers that I have seen in my time in Congress. This should be called the ``Anti-Innovation Act.'' This is yet the latest of a decades-long attack on the patent rights of the American people that were placed into the Constitution by our Founding Fathers. For decades now, large multinational corporations, very powerful economic entities that have influence on government, have been trying to neuter the patent rights of the American people. Why have they been doing this? Why do they want to eliminate or to dramatically reduce the rights of our inventors to control what they have invented? Because these are big guys who don't want to pay the little guys when they steal from them. The fact is that our Founding Fathers knew it was important for someone who has created something, whether it is a writer or an inventor, to have the right to control his or her creation for a certain period of time. The time period has been 17 years, traditionally, since the time of our Constitution. Our Founding Fathers knew this was important to our country's well-being, not just in terms of the rights of the individual, which we agree with as Americans and which were written into our Constitution as part of the Bill of Rights. Only one place is the word ``right'' used in the body of the Constitution, and that is in the section dealing with providing our inventors and, yes, our writers with the right to control what they have created for a certain period of time in order to profit from it. Our big corporations and these multinational corporations that have no loyalty to the United States, these people who are continually going overseas to China and elsewhere are trying to neuter this so that they can take any new innovation without having to pay the person who has actually been the inventor and created this. That is totally contrary to what our country has been all about. We have had the strongest patent system in the world--the strongest in the world. What has that given the American people? It has uplifted our standard of living of ordinary people. Yes, these folks in the multinational corporations, they live very well. Well, the American people have lived well because we have had the technology, whether it is agricultural technology or transportation technology or any of the other type of energy technologies that we have. These have uplifted us and created more wealth for our society. Americans' security, prosperity, and, yes, freedom have been due to our technological advantages. It is not that our people worked harder. It is not that we had such natural resources. There are countries all over the world where people work hard and have natural resources. It is our freedom and our respect for the individual rights of our citizens that have given us prosperity and security and freedom. Now these powerful multinational corporations have targeted our patent system; and, yes, their motive, as I say, is to steal, let the big guys steal from the little guys. That is what this supposed Innovation Act, which, as I say, should be called the ``Anti-Innovation Act,'' is all about. In fact, there is a legitimate problem of frivolous lawsuits in our country. There is no doubt about that. It is not just in the area of technology. It is throughout our medicine and everywhere else. But there have been a number of people who have taken patent law and claimed rights that they weren't given by the Patent Office and issued frivolous lawsuits to people to try to get them to pay money to them. They are called patent trolls. This excuse for changing our patent system is a lame excuse in the sense that we don't need to destroy the patent rights of the little guy in order to cure this problem. Every provision of the Innovation Act-- every provision--limits the rights of legitimate patent holders in order to protect their own creation. Let's not eliminate our freedom to handle those people, those few people, who are abusing it. I ask my colleagues to join me in opposing that and alerting the American people to this challenge to their freedom and their security and their prosperity.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to alert my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, and I would like to alert the American people that there is a monstrous piece of legislation that will do great damage to our country and to the welfare of the American people making its way through the Judiciary Committee. In fact, the Judiciary Committee will have a markup this Thursday of what is called the American Innovation Act, H.R. 9. This, in reality, is the anti-innovation act. It is one of the most egregious examples of crony capitalism that I have witnessed in this body as I have been here for the last 26 years. This legislation uses a legitimate problem, which is frivolous lawsuits, and then portends to solve that problem by dramatically restricting the right of all Americans to sue in order to address those who have violated their rights in the name of usurping those who have been called patent trolls. A patent troll is someone who has purchased the right for a patent from an inventor and now has that property right himself. In the name of restricting those patent trolls from enforcing the right that they have bought from the inventor, they are dramatically restricting those people, both the inventors and anyone else who owns these intellectual property rights known as patents. Early provisions of this bill, and almost every provision of this bill, make it more difficult for the inventor to protect himself against the theft of huge corporations. And there you go; huge, multinational corporations are seeking to destroy America's patent system. I have been fighting this for 25 years. They have been fighting it because they want to take the property of American inventors, and they don't want to pay for it--surprise, surprise. So they passed legislation in the name of stopping frivolous lawsuits that prevent people with legitimate lawsuits from actually obtaining the justice they deserve. This will undercut American innovation. It will destroy the individual inventors. Almost every American university now has come out opposed to this because they have found that the result of this bill, by restricting the people's right to actually defend their own intellectual property rights, will undermine the value--dramatically decrease the value--of patents, which will mean people won't invest in patents, which means the universities now have less resources. Who will benefit? Large corporations, multinational corporations with no loyalty to the United States will then have the power to take from our inventors their inventions. This is a game changer for American innovation. It is the anti- innovation act. I ask my colleagues to please pay attention to H.R. 9. Don't let them push this over. Don't let this crony capitalism being done using a decoy, meaning the patent trolls, get away from the fact that they are actually trying to destroy the system for legitimate inventors. As I say, I have been fighting this for 25 years. We have seen this in many forms. The last time, the decoy was submarine patentors. This time it is patent trolls. The fact is that none of this is an excuse to dramatically decrease the ability of our inventors to own what the Constitution gives them: a 15- to 17-year period where they own what they invented; thus, they can make a profit from it. This would have destroyed all of the young inventors that made such a difference in the American way of life. We will not be prosperous and we will not be secure unless the American people have the right to the own their intellectual property, unless the inventors that are the basis of many of our new industries know that they will control their patent and that some big corporation won't just come along and steal it. This goes so far as to limit and to say that, for example, one of the provisions in the bill, if an inventor sues a major company that has stolen his or her patent, well, not only now will the inventor be liable for the costs of the litigation, but anybody who has invested in his patent will then be liable for those court costs. Who the heck will ever invest in an inventor when he is up against a megacorporation? No, we should not be permitting the theft of the intellectual property rights of our inventors. I would ask my colleagues to pay attention to H.R. 9. I would ask the American people to get ahold of your Congressman and make sure he understands how heinous this bill is that has already, as I say, been opposed by every major university in this country and, of course, every group of inventors in this country. If it was the Innovation Act, as the title would suggest, why would the inventors be against it? I would ask my colleagues to join me in opposing H.R. 9 as it is marked up in the Judiciary Committee this coming Thursday.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr).

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Titus).

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chair, who has the right to close?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. That is correct. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Today, I ask my colleagues to make a practical as well as a principled vote. My amendment would prohibit any Federal funds from being used to supersede State law in those States that have legalized the use of medical marijuana. Let's be clear. The intent of this amendment is to make it illegal for Federal employees to engage in efforts to enforce Federal law that makes the medical use or distribution of medical marijuana illegal in States where the use of marijuana for medical purposes has been made legal. The practical aspect of this vote is based on the realization that, at a time of severely limited resources, it makes sense to target terrorists, criminals, and other threats to the American people rather than use Federal law enforcement resources to prevent suffering and sick people from using a weed that may or may not alleviate their suffering. There are many examples--yes, anecdotal--in which the use of marijuana has helped end severe suffering. Trying to prevent this use of marijuana once it has been legalized by a State government is a travesty, an inexcusable waste of our limited resources. That is the practical reason to vote for my amendment. As for the principle, we Republicans claim to base our decisions on individual freedom, on states' rights as mandated by the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, and especially on the doctor-patient relationship. Don't bother to use rhetoric about those principles on other issues if you vote for the Federal Government to supersede individual rights, states' rights, and the doctor-patient relationship when it comes to marijuana.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I yield myself 10 seconds. Stop this waste of limited Federal law enforcement resources. Stop the roughshod use of the Federal bureaucracy from busting down doors to prevent sick people from using a substance that his or her doctor believes might alleviate his or her pain. Vote for the Rohrabacher amendment.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen).

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis).

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I appreciate that from my colleague. Look, our Founding Fathers didn't want criminal justice to be handled by the Federal Government. I don't know what government you want to have in our country, but most of us here don't believe that the Federal Government--neither did our Founding Fathers--is an all-wise system, that the Federal Government is the only government that has wisdom to make the decisions for the families. This is absolutely absurd to think that the Federal Government is going to mandate all of these things even though the people of the States and other doctors, many other doctors, would like to have the right to prescribe to their patients what they think is going to alleviate their suffering. No, we should not get in the way. As I said in the first debate, it is sinful for us to try to get in the way between a doctor and his patient, saying, Oh, no, the Federal Government knows better. This is a states' rights issue. This is the issue of what our Founding Fathers had in mind for this country, where the decisions would be made like this. They didn't want the Federal Government to have a police force that can bust in people's doors. No. They wanted to have individual freedom, personal choice. They want parents to take care of their kids. They didn't want an all-controlling nanny State to control our lives. That is what this country was supposed to be all about. I thought that is what Republicans were supposed to be all about, and I hope my Republican colleagues will start reexamining whether or not they believe in the fundamental principles of limited government and individual freedom that we have always talked about. So I would ask my colleagues to join me, reaffirm what our Founding Fathers had in mind, which is freedom, states' rights, limited government, and people making choices about their own lives and being responsible for their families and not shoving that off on the Federal Government.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let me just say this. I just wish you would have talked to the very doctors and people I know that have been suffering, and they have gone to their doctor and asked for help, and the doctors have said, ``Yes, medical marijuana will help you''--to believe that the Federal Government can stop that. I have met people whose suffering has been alleviated. Some veterans I know have gone through seizure after seizure, and they were only helped by medical marijuana. If we have a heart, if we have our beliefs, let's make sure that we stand for freedom in this vote. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, let me note that the commercial space industry has not cost us taxpayers' money. The commercial space industry has generated billions and billions of dollars worth of income to honest citizens who then pay their taxes--who wouldn't have jobs otherwise--not to mention, of course, the billions of dollars the commercial space industry has saved us simply by doing a more efficient job at launching satellites and at supplying the space station than could be done by the public sector--by NASA and other government employees. H.R. 2262, the SPACE Act of 2015, builds on the House Science, Space, and Technology's bipartisan tradition of promoting economic growth in America. Today, we are talking about that economic growth in terms of an emerging, new, entrepreneurial industry that is tremendously beneficial to the bottom line of America--the billions of dollars that it is creating with a new, innovative approach to an industry that goes into space in order to accomplish its missions. The SPACE Act of 2015 specifically continues the streamlined regulatory regime that Congress put in place for commercial human spaceflight just a decade ago in the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004. I am proud to have been the one to have authored that legislation, legislation which passed in Congress with bipartisan support. I would hope that bipartisan support continues because, in 2004, it was Bart Gordon of Tennessee and Nick Lampson of Texas--both Democrats--who made it possible for us to get this legislation passed as well as Silvestre Reyes from Texas. Of course, there are a lot of Texans here today involved in this debate because there are a lot of people in Texas who are hired and who have great jobs because of what we did then. When we talk about and when we hear that we have cut $243 million, no, no. We were willing to keep that in the budget. Republicans would have been willing if we had found other areas that had been less important. But the reason these things happen is that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle cannot seem to prioritize. We prioritize this. Mr. Chairman, we prioritize launching new industries, creating new jobs, saving billions of dollars in money that would be spent otherwise, because the commercial space industry, like SpaceX and other champions of space entrepreneurship, has done a great deal of benefit to the United States of America.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, my amendment calls for a study analyzing our approach to third-party liability with regard to spaceflight participants. The study will identify issues, options to address those issues, consequences of those options, and the potential cost to the Federal Government for each option. I would note that the idea for this study was originally put forward by Ms. Edwards of Maryland, someone whom I deeply admire and listen to when she makes her points. We heard her make her points during discussion with our committee, and I felt it was a very good idea, and I am moving forward with it today. The underlying bill includes a legislative fix for third-party liability and spaceflight participants. That is what our bill does. However, a study would see if there is even a better way or if we have covered all of our bases with the fix that is in this bill. Right now, a spaceflight participant is financially at risk if the vehicle they fly on has some kind of an incident. It doesn't matter if you are a billionaire or someone who has scrimped for a long time to get one of these spaceflights, maybe a contest winner or a science teacher who wants to share his experience with students or a scientist accompanying their experiment. Right now, these folks aren't just paying the fare; they are potentially risking everything that their family owns because they may be liable if something goes wrong. As I say, we have a fix about that in the current bill, but this study would see if there is a better way, along with some other things we can do, to make that fix better. There is no reason at this point to believe that this approach is any worse than the other approaches, but let's keep our minds open. Right now, we have a hole in the bridge, and this bill puts a patch on that hole. Let's see if there is a study to see if there is a better way to fix the bridge. In the meantime, we have got something in place in this bill--a study--to see if we can do a better job. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I thank the gentlewoman for giving us the idea for this study in the first place, and I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith), the chairman of the committee.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway), my very good friend. Repeal the Oil Export Ban

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to warn my colleagues and the American people of several threats to their safety and their prosperity. These threats are observable from Washington, D.C., but may not be observable to the American people. So I ask my colleagues to pay attention, number one, to what we are doing here, but I also would ask the American people to pay attention to what we are doing here. There are changes being maneuvered through our legislative branch and being mandated by executive orders from President Obama that will undermine the economic well-being of hard-working Americans and put us in jeopardy as a nation, both economically and in terms of our national security. Those pursuing these egregious policy initiatives are fulfilling President Obama's pledge to change America. And what most Americans believed was a commitment to make our country better, to change America, was, in reality, an elitist and, I believe, an arrogant pledge to dramatically alter the basic and fundamental institutions and values that have been thought of by our patriots to be the essential elements defining our country and, of course, ensuring our freedom, security, and prosperity. What are these threats that I talk about? What are these threats that we need to pay attention to? They are not coming from one political party. They are not coming from the Republicans or the Democrats, as a party. You can see support across the board on both sides of the aisle on various sides of these issues. It is also not a threat just stemming from one person or one political leader, but it is, of course, what we are talking about. This threat is coming from a very powerful coalition seeking profit for themselves, even if it impoverishes the people or diminishes, at least, the economic well-being of the people of the United States. Ironically, people who are enjoying their freedom and people who are enjoying their relative prosperity don't pay attention to some of the very intricate matters that have come before us in Congress. But I can assure all of my fellow Americans, there are powerful interests who are paying attention, and they are doing what they best can do to manipulate the law in a way that will enhance their profits, even if it is being done at the expense of the well-being of the American people. We can see this in dramatic changes that are being suggested in something that probably is very boring and tame to most Americans when they even hear that someone is going to even talk about patent law-- patent law, which is the legal structure that enforces an inventor's right to own and control the product of his or her genius, labor, and investment for a given period of time. So I say, of course, that sounds pretty mundane, patent law. Is it some detailed, intricate regulation and control of this area of economic life, of jobs, and things that we do in America? Well, it is more than that. It may sound mundane; but, in reality, patent law and the patent rights of our people--the right of our people to own the technology they have created for a specific period of time-- has been a significant determinant in our country's way of life, our country's quality of life, and the security of our Nation. This intellectual property right, the right through a patent ownership of 17 years' control and--not only of 17 years of control, but also of profit from one's own inventions, has been vital to our well-being as a nation and an essential part of the American Dream. Let's note that this was a right that was written into the Constitution by our Founding Fathers. People know about the Bill of Rights. But the word ``right'' was only used in the body of the Constitution once, and that was a section that guaranteed that Americans--that what Congress should do is to make sure that Americans were guaranteed the right to control their own creations, if they are inventors or writers, for a given period of time, to profit from it so that they would have incentives to come up and be the most creative people in the world. Our Founding Fathers believed that technology and freedom would uplift ordinary Americans and give all Americans a chance at a decent life. And they were right. They wrote that into the Constitution. It is right there. I believe it probably was under the influence of my favorite Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin. What we have to recognize is that over the years of our country, what has made us a great nation is our freedom and technology. This is especially true for minority Americans and especially of Black Americans. Let me note that Black Americans, if you take a look at the history of our patent system, are disproportionately inventive. In the history of this country, actually, as a proportion of their population, our Black Americans have been more inventive than any other group in our country. Why is that? Because patent law and property law were considered a constitutional right, and this was in the one area in which Black Americans were not discriminated against once they were freed in 1860 to 1865, when our Black citizens were freed. After that we found that more patents proportionately went to that community because they needed an opportunity to uplift themselves free from outside forces beating down on them and denying their rights. Mr. Speaker, our patent system and the patents granted by Washington thus respected the rights of all of our citizens, including our minority citizens. Thus, making sure that we have patent protection has been one of the great boons to our minority populations, who otherwise suffered great discrimination and suffered from a lack of rights, except for the property rights that come from inventions. We see this has been good not just for minority Americans however. Let me note that we have, with technology, enhanced the ability of our people to work hard and get the job done and thus create wealth that was then owned by a large number of people rather than an elite. Of course, when people understand the importance of technology--and business has more and more come to the understanding that it is new technology that will give them leverage and control over wealth. There has been an ongoing attempt in these last 20 years to dramatically diminish the patent protection enjoyed by Americans, the patent protection written right into our Constitution. The fact is that, for the last 20 years, I have been personally engaged along with a small group of people who believe that technology and freedom are essential to the well-being of our country. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and others have beat back many of these attempts to diminish the patent protection of our citizens. Mr. Speaker, America does have a patent system now. It is the strongest in the world. It is the strongest patent system in the world. We have always been proud of that. We have been proud that it has resulted in the fact that ordinary people have high standards of living here and they earn a good living from work because their work is enhanced by technological superiority over their competitors. By the way, Mr. Speaker, people work hard all over the world. Everybody works hard. In all of these countries they work hard like our people work hard, but they don't have the technology that enhances their work and amplifies their energy and hard work so that more wealth is created. We have encouraged that since the day our Constitution was ratified. That is why our people, when they work hard, end up living better because it gives us a competitive edge over the slave and oppressed labor in other countries. We, in fact, of course, know that the prosperity of average Americans to us and to our Founding Fathers was an important goal. It wasn't just we were going to have a country that worked, but it was going to be a system with respect for rights that would lead to a good and decent living for all of us, for all the people, and not just a small elite of businessmen. Well, we have done this over the years, and it has worked well. We have not had to have our own people who do work hard having to compete in terms of muscular and use of their physiques in order to produce goods, services, and wealth. They had the technology that permitted them to outcompete those other countries. Also, Mr. Speaker, it ensures we have a more secure country. Having a strong patent system where people are encouraged to invent new things and to be innovative has given us the edge over people who would do harm to our country. It has been important to our national security because we can't take on adversaries that don't respect human rights. If America was trying to secure itself from threats from groups of people around the world, leaders and gangsters who have no respect for human rights whatsoever, we lose because they are willing to lose all of their people, and they are willing for any amount of bloodshed to maintain control and power and, yes, to beat the United States and democratic countries. Instead, Mr. Speaker, we have had technology at work helping defend our country, technology that would not have existed had we not had the patent protection that has been traditional to our country. Even look today what is happening. Without drones, where would we be? Without drones fighting the good fight against ISIL, we would have to have thousands of Americans there to fight that threat to mankind and the freedom of the world. Instead, we have joined with the forces in Erbil, which is the Kurds, in standing tough directly against this onslaught of radical Islam, and they are holding firm. But without our drones there to help them, they would be overrun. So this idea of property ownership of technology, of your technological developments, has been heart and soul to a prosperous and secure America. So when I say there are changes being proposed here in Congress, they are trying to manipulate through the system that will affect the prosperity of the average American and the security of our Nation. The public and my fellow colleagues need to pay attention because we are again facing a major onslaught, an attack on this fundamental right of technology ownership by those who create that technology. We are facing an onslaught that is being what? Being masterminded, being masterminded and being pushed by megamultinational corporations who are not operating in the interests of the people of the United States. They could care less about all of that. But they are operating after what they can do to enrich themselves, even if it is not in the interests of the people of the United States and the interests of our security. These megamultinational corporations have pumped millions upon millions of dollars into lobbying for changes in our patent system that diminish the rights of the inventor and enables these multinational corporations to steal the intellectual property of our inventors and use it without giving compensation to the owners. This is in direct contradiction to what the Constitution meant to guarantee and why it was written directly into the body of the Constitution that this was a right that Americans should be concerned about. Mr. Speaker, for the last 20 years there has been a stealth attack on America's strong and effective patent system. Let us note that we have had the strongest and the most effective and recognized fair patent system in the world. All other patent systems have been judged against us, and now we have had these last 20 years an insidious undermining, and we are on the edge of a huge attack and perhaps successful destruction of fundamental patent rights that have been part of our people for many years. For example, 20 years ago, shortly after I came here, I found that in the GATT--that is a trade treaty that we have--there were provisions that were snuck into the GATT implementation legislation. That is legislation we passed here in Congress in order to implement a trade agreement. These big corporate interests had put into the GATT implementation legislation without telling anybody two provisions that would have dramatically hurt the small inventors in this country. Up until now, the Constitution actually says that the inventors and the writers are guaranteed a specific time where they will control. They will be granted a specific time where they will control their patent, the rights to their patent, and the rights of their creative genius. Well, it has traditionally been that once you file, as soon as the patent is actually granted to the inventor, then the clock starts ticking, and you get 17 years of protection. In different parts of the world, that is not what the law has been. In Japan and in Europe, it has been, oh, no, once you apply, after 20 years, even if it takes you 10 or 15 years to get your patent or 19 years, no, the clock is ticking then. You may not be granted your patent for 19 years, and then you have 1 year left, and that is no patent protection at all. So now they are trying to foist that on us. By the way, that would give people, knowing the clock is ticking--those small inventors in other countries are faced by people who are trying to pressure them to accept lesser claims to the legitimacy of their patent in order to basically prevent these guys, men and women, from being compensated the way they would be if they had a guaranteed term, which is part of our Constitution. Mr. Speaker, the other provision that was there 20 years ago was the 18-month publication demand. That is, after 18 months, when someone applies for a patent--now, it is that once someone applies for a patent, that patent application is absolutely secret until that patent is granted. Unless you have a patent in your hand--then it is published for the world because their ownership has been established. Well, that has been traditionally what our Patent Office and our patent protection has been. Basically, you have a secret and you developed it, you give it to the Patent Office. In fact, if anybody leaked that information, up until this point it has been a felony for anybody to tell anyone else until that patent is actually granted to the inventor. Well, Mr. Speaker, they want to change this and say, if you haven't been granted your patent within 18 months, it will be published for the whole world. Think about that. Think about what I am saying. Before, for our entire country's history, we have made sure that an application is secret so that nobody can get ahead of the inventor himself and the inventor won't be put in a bad spot. We made sure that until the patent is granted it is secret. They want to change that so that after 18 months it is published. What if that patent takes 10 years to issue? That means the man or woman who invented this piece of technology, our competitors overseas will be able to use it for all of that time because they will know all about it, but the patent hasn't been granted to the inventor yet. I called that the ``Steal American Technologies Act.'' That is what they were trying to do. That is what it would result in, and keep that in mind. The large multinationals sought to weaken the ability of our inventors to enforce patent rights. Why? Why do they want these big companies here in the United States? Well, mostly, they are multinational companies now--they are big guys--and what they want to do is steal from the little guy--surprise, surprise. The big guys would try to manipulate the creation of law here that will enable them to take something from some person who has less economic power than themselves. Our constitutional rights are supposed to protect the little guy's rights. We believe the newspaper should be able to be published, but little guys should be able to print a mimeographed piece of information themselves and distribute it or to gather. Actually, what is hard for me to imagine is that, if these big guys were actually trying to diminish the rights of religion or speech in this country, or assembly, there would be an outcry; but, because it is the rights to own technology that you have created for a given period of time--it sounds too confusing, and they have let this feeling that maybe the people can't understand it, so they don't pay attention--they have let that lack of attention give them an opening to destroy and undermine the rights of Americans, and I think this right is every bit as important as those other rights of religion and speech, et cetera. What they have set up in these last 20 years, it is an ongoing David versus Goliath because some of the biggest corporations in the world are behind the effort to change the patent law. Well, we beat them back. As I say, there was a coalition of us-- Democrat and Republican, Marcy Kaptur. We had some very good support from the Black Caucus. I might add that, again, they recognized how important inventions have been to the Black community; but we beat them back. It was a bipartisan coalition. We have had to, over the years, compromise and negotiate certain things, but they have not gotten their way; but every time they have tried--they have tried to overwhelm those of us who are preventing the diminishing of patent rights--they have had to use scare tactics, always claiming that there is a boogeyman, there is a boogeyman out there, and that is the reason why we have to attack the inventor, because there is something out there that is really threatening and it is sinister and it is a sinister force that has to be defeated, that is why we have to take away all of the rights of the inventors over here, because they have now tried to tell the story in a way. It is the equivalent of saying we are going to take away the rights of every American to sue someone--or a company or anyone else who has caused them damage--because there are frivolous lawsuits. Yes, there are frivolous lawsuits. There are some people who misuse our legal system. The last thing we want to do is eliminate the rights of all Americans to use the court system to protect their rights. That is basically what is going on here. Our own cherished patent rights to own what you have created--and this constitutional right that was given to Americans--is on the verge of being dramatically altered and diminished and destroyed. By the way, the first boogeyman that was used in order to try to gain support for these very same two items that they snuck in the GATT, the boogeyman was called the submarine patentors. Submarine patents--that is all you heard about before--as if a person who was filing for a patent was a submarine patentor. Everybody has got to lose their patent rights in order to get the submarine patentor. What was the submarine patentor? A submarine patentor was--their definition--someone who files for a patent and then does everything they can to delay the patent from being issued; and then, after years and years, the patent is finally granted, and they have got all this leverage on all the people who have used the technology in the meantime. Well, I am sorry; there were very few submarine patentors--there were some--but the fact is most inventors were struggling to get their patents issued to them as soon as possible because they needed the money, especially the little guys needed the money, and they were struggling, ``Please, give us the patent so we can move forward on this,'' but, no, they were being presented as if they were trying to slow down the process. Well, we finally, after really fighting for 10 years on this, reached the compromise, which my chief of staff, Rick Dykema, and myself negotiated, along with Marcy Kaptur, who negotiated this agreement with us, that if, indeed, there is a patent applicant who uses his abilities or uses various powers that he has in the bureaucratic process to delay the issue of the patent, well, if that happens, then, indeed, that patent, the time, the clock, has to start ticking against that guy, so he is using his own time when it has not been issued. Well, that solved the problem--there it was--without diminishing the rights of those people who were struggling to get their patents out, but took 10 years or 15 years to get the patent issued. That wasn't a hard thing to negotiate, a hard thing to do, but it was a hard thing to accomplish because the people who were pushing submarine patents were really trying to diminish the patent rights of all Americans so that they could steal from little guys and could take away their patent rights basically as soon as possible. Well, now, the current boogeyman is the patent troll. Now, there are some people who misuse and have frivolous lawsuits who use the patent system. There is no doubt about it. I might add this idea that people will be sent a thing--you are violating my patent, you either give my $5,000, or I am going to sue you, and then small businesses go along with it--there have been court cases now that have taken care of that. Obviously, that is a swindle and something we can't put up with; that was happening to a degree, but there is no excuse, as I say, to eliminate the rights of all Americans because somebody abuses a right. That is not what is acceptable. The patent troll is being used as a straw man. We are going to have legislation that will get this guy who has these frivolous lawsuits and is creating such havoc among small-business men and ripping them off. Just like the submarine patents, that can be taken care of without eliminating the patent rights of our people. What we have now is the straw man, the patent troll. When you hear a debate on this issue, all you will hear is patent troll, patent troll, patent troll, not recognizing that every provision in this bill diminishes--it is H.R. 9 that is before our Judiciary Committee now-- every provision makes it more difficult for the small inventor to enforce his patent against infringement by future megacorporations. Guess who is pushing this legislation? Huge megacorporations who want that little guy not to be able to sue a corporation that has stolen his intellectual property rights--this is basically--but they are going to say: Oh, no, it is the troll we are after, the troll. Well, as I say, there have been frivolous lawsuits, and there have been changes made in the judicial system itself of how to handle that, but there is no excuse for a troll--for this word ``troll,'' a straw man--get him to be used to damage and destroy the rights of the 95 percent of the technology creators in our country, take away their rights to get this straw man. Well, let me tell you how the word ``troll'' came about, the word ``patent troll.'' That is the reason you are hearing it. Every time you hear somebody say it, remember this. A group of corporate elitists got in a circle in a room--I know because one of the people who was in that meeting switched sides and came over and disclosed that these corporate executives said: What can we do to make it sound so sinister that we can get this passed? What words can we come up with that will just basically create such a bad feeling that the American people will not recognize that what we are really doing is trying to get the small inventor and make sure that the small inventor cannot sue us for things that we are using? Okay. They went around the room. This friend, the fellow who told me about this meeting, said: I came up with the words ``patent pirate,'' and then, by the time it got around the circle, somebody came up with the words ``patent troll.'' They said: That is it. That sounds so horrible, we can distract everybody's attention using that, and that is good enough. That sounds so evil that we can make sure that we go into battle using that in front of us, instead of we want to diminish the patent rights of honest, hard-working inventors who deserve to have a profit from their creation of their technology. That is just how cynical this debate has been. Every provision of H.R. 9--a bill now sitting in the Judiciary Committee--prevents--makes it more difficult for an inventor to actually enforce his rights and sue a company that is trying to steal, use his property rights, intellectual property rights, without compensating him. Let me give you an example of something in the bill and the changes they are proposing. Now, they are changing to loser pays legal fees. If you have a small inventor and if he sues that company and it is a huge company, that is usually what he has created and making profit from it, if he sues them and he loses, he will have to pay the legal fees for that huge company. Now, for the huge company, that is almost nothing. Taking on a case of one guy is nothing in their expense account because they have got 100 lawyers in a stable, waiting to help and being paid for. Well, if the inventor loses, that is it for him. That alone is wrong. In this legislation, H.R. 9, they have added another little proviso to destroy the small inventor; and that is, if someone invests in his invention, if someone invests in the invention and he manages to be successful and comes up with a new piece of technology and he is granted the patent and some megacorporation comes along and incorporates it and uses it and refuses to give this guy even a small payment for using the technology that he created, his intellectual property rights, if someone has invested in that inventor to help him make the invention, let's say that, when that inventor goes up to battle Goliath in his megacorporation, and let's say, even though he is right, he loses--because that happens sometimes in our country many times, where some people with a great number of very sophisticated lawyers against the little guy, the little guy sometimes loses--well, what is going to happen now, according to this bill, is anyone who has invested in the inventor is going to have to be liable for the legal fees that come out of that suit. Who is ever going to give an investment to an inventor if that may open them up to liability? It is a liability, I might add, to some megacorporation, megamultinational corporation. Well, this provision just demonstrates what is the purpose of that provision. The provision is to beat down the little guy so that the big guys can steal, and that is evident, very evident; yet this bill is still moving forward. It is H.R. 9. It is in the Judiciary Committee now. As I say, H.R. 9 is the equivalent of saying: Because there are frivolous lawsuits, we are going to do everything we can to diminish the power of ordinary citizens to use the law and legal lawsuits for compensation for damages done to them. Every provision of the bill weakens the right of the inventor to enforce his or her own patents. This bill actually passed the House last year. We struggled against it here in the House, but what happens is 90 percent of the people here in this body are just so busy that it is hard to pay attention to something that seems mundane like a patent law, and they just can't get themselves to focus on it. The American people also think that issues like this are so complicated that they can't get involved, but that leaves the whole playing field open to huge corporations that are out to enrich themselves by basically structuring law in a way that the power and the wealth will flow to them. Supposedly, the system our Founding Fathers wanted was for the wealth to flow broadly across our country so that every American could benefit from new technologies and new wealth that was being created. Now they want to corral that wealth; they want to diminish our rights in order to enrich themselves. These companies are not companies that are loyal to the United States. They are being loyal to their own profits, and some of them are multinational corporations that have actually no ties, real ties, to the United States. Let me just suggest that this bill did pass the House last year, but it was stopped in the Senate because, by then, we had made so much noise here. As I say, a bipartisan group, led by myself, Marcy Kaptur from Ohio, Mr. Massie from Kentucky, and other very strong activists, got together, and we made so much noise that the American universities finally paid attention because that bill that lets people steal patent rights was a huge threat to our university system. Had it been signed into law, the value of patents would have gone down dramatically. Let me go back to how that works. Remember, we were talking about a troll. What their definition of ``troll'' is is anybody who buys the patent rights from someone who has invented something and has a patent but who doesn't have the money to enforce it. Anybody who actually buys the patent rights but is not aiming at commercializing it himself and is going to enforce that and make a profit from it, that is going to be what they are stamping out. The universities are not there to commercialize what they are doing. They are there to basically have new discoveries, and they realize they have got a lot of patents that they own as part of their portfolios and that the actual values of those patent collections by the universities would have dramatically gone down. As well, of course, the patent value of any American would have gone down at that point. Also, other industries that are really important industries to our well-being--PhRMA and others, biotech industries--which struggle hard to come up with one patent that they then can sell in the market, are totally undermined by this effort to weaken our patent system. We managed to mobilize those people, and we stopped it the last time around; but the multinational corporations behind this legislation are so arrogant that this bill is now going to be shoved through again. This time, I think, with the American people, we can actually stop it here in the House, and we can certainly stop it in the Senate. We need the American people to mobilize and to call their Congressmen and ask: How do you stand on this terrible patent bill, H.R. 9? We need people who are going to stand up for the little guy in America, not for some megacorporation that is trying to permit the theft of American intellectual property rights by multinational corporations. Whether or not we succeed this time around is going to depend on, yes, the people here who understand the issue, fighting it out, being as aggressive as we can be, and the American people mobilizing to make sure we protect our sacred rights granted in the Constitution. One of the most important, I believe to be, is the right of technology ownership to people who create that technology. As I say, there are powerful interest groups in this city and in our country and in the world that try to change policy and are manipulating government. That is clear. That is fine. We have a democratic process. We just need to make sure that we are all being held accountable--that all of the Members of the House and the Senate are accountable for their votes--and that we know and the public at least has the chance to know what we are voting on. Actually, there is something happening right now where that is not true at all, and I sure hope the American people are paying attention to what is going on here in Washington concerning what they call TPP, the trade promotion pact, and then there is the TPA, which gives trade promotion authority to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is a trade treaty with the nations around the Pacific. The sinister nature of this can be seen because this trade treaty with the Pacific nations is secret. It has been declared classified. Right now, if I had gone down and read what now exists of this trade treaty and if I had announced it here on the floor, I would have been violating secrecy restrictions that they have declared--how about this?--in a policy about trade with major countries of the world, which will have an enormous impact on our well-being. It is being kept totally secret from the American people. How is that? Then they say Members of Congress can go down and look at it if they want to. Of course, as they have said, you can only do it within a certain time. They have regulated the time we can go down, and we are so busy that almost no Members of Congress will have gone down and read the actual documents that explain what that trade policy is that they are trying to foist on us. Please, I hope the American people understand that Members of Congress should not be voting on things that, number one, they don't have access to, but we should not be voting on something if we have not permitted the American people to know what that is. You will remember the famous statement by Ms. Pelosi about ObamaCare, which was that we have to pass it in order to find out what is in it. That is totally unacceptable. In trade treaties, these things will now pass rules and regulations based on this treaty that will impact our way of life here. Now, we have been briefed on it. I am on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and we were briefed on this the other day. The two main administration guys there--the people who had been Ambassadors and who are currently with the State Department--were briefing us. It is just like the boogey words over here, the scare words, in terms of patents. Now, this is all being used in just the opposite way with every glorious word--higher income for our people, more competitive for America, and all of the trade will come in our direction. Yet, when I asked these briefers, ``Hey, have you read this treaty?'' neither one of them had read it. So the people advocating for this treaty have not even read the treaty themselves. I found a provision in the treaty, or at least I understand it is in there--I have not verified it yet because we have all of this trouble to go through to verify what we are being asked to support--that says that patents in the United States will basically have to be published after 18 months. If a patent application is made and if after 18 months the patent is not granted, the patent will be published for the whole world to see. Uh-huh. Does that sound familiar? They tried to put that over on us 20 years ago. We managed to thwart it then, and now they want to sneak it into a treaty, and the American people are not permitted to know what is in the treaty. Will that hurt us in some way? It will only make all of our technological discoveries available for our competitors overseas to be using long before the patent is even granted to the American inventor. You see what type of sinister forces we are up against. Who can sit down here and say how wonderful this treaty is going to be when the American people aren't allowed to see it and when almost all of us have not read it and when our briefers who come here have not even read it? I asked them yesterday, these briefers, ``Well, is this in the treaty?'' They didn't know. They didn't know whether or not this provision on patents was in there, which would undermine our rights to control our own creations here and have our opponents and our competitors overseas have all of the information about our technology even before the patent is granted. They didn't even know that was in there. They didn't know if it was or if it wasn't. By the way, if I had gone down and had finally gotten through the maze and had read the actual wording in the treaty, I would have been required not to have mentioned it today on the House floor as we are being restricted because it has been declared secret from the American people. This is outrageous. We don't need to have a trade promotion authority that will keep things from the American people, and we don't need to have a trade treaty with the Pacific and with all of these nations in Asia that will open us up to having our technology stolen, but also we don't know the other parts of it either. We keep hearing of the great things that are in it that are going to benefit the American workers, but we know what has happened in China. As for China, we were told, if we opened up our trade with China, China would modernize, and they would become a liberal, democratic country over the years. I call it the ``hug a Nazi, make a liberal'' theory. Basically, we were told that China would become a benevolent force. As we know now, China is becoming a malevolent force. China is becoming a threat to world peace, and the American people have not benefited from China trade as our good-paying jobs have gone to China. We don't want that for the rest of the world. We need to know what is in these trade treaties because they might have a major impact on bringing our working people's salaries down even more. Whether it is immigration or trade or patent law, our criteria should be what is in the interests of the people of the United States or whether it is in trade, where we have been basically having trade for the benefit of some mega-multinational corporations or patent law for the same clique. Guess what they also want? They want cheap labor, and that is why you see today this push to give 11 million people amnesty who have come here illegally. It is not 11 million. That is a 10-year-old figure. By the time they get done, they are going to bring 50 million people into our country who wouldn't be here otherwise. What is that going to do to our wage base? What is that going to do to Americans who are out looking for work right now? What is that going to do to our schools? to the money we have for our veterans' benefits? What is that going to do? We are undermining the well-being of the American people for the profits of some mega-multinational corporations. That is wrong. I am a Republican--I believe in free enterprise; I believe in private property; I believe in the profit motive--but we have to have a Congress that is working for the benefit of and protecting the rights of the American people, and they need to mobilize to make sure we are doing that by supporting them to make sure that our communities are not overrun with illegal immigrants. By the way, if you grant amnesty to 25 million illegals, there will be a huge surge of people from around the world who will know that all they have to do is outlast us, and they will get their amnesty. We need to make sure that these decisions, those things--immigration policy and trade policy and, yes, intellectual property protection policy--are done in a way that will benefit us and will not benefit our competitors. When I say us, United States, it is us, U-S, us, the American people. That should be the basis of our criteria: what is going to be in the interests of the American people; not bring down their wages, not let people steal our technology and use it to compete against us. I ask my colleagues, please pay attention to H.R. 9 and these issues. Join with me in supporting the cause of the American people, of us instead of the big corporations. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to acknowledge the accomplishments of my constituent, Ms. Becky Mudd. Becky ran a 263-mile course from Huntington Beach, California to the border of Arizona in nine days to raise public awareness of and funds for pediatric cancer research. Over the nine day period, Becky ran daily and dedicated parts of her journey to different forms of childhood cancer. She dedicated the first day of her run to Samuel Jeffers who at age 8 lost his life to brain cancer. The Jeffers family was Becky's support crew during her run. As Becky neared the halfway point of her run in the city of Banning, California, the police chief rode alongside her on a bicycle. Becky made a brief stop at Banning City Hall to meet with families who had lost children to cancer. She surpassed her fundraising goal, raising more than $7,500 to support the Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation. Through her activism, Becky has touched the lives of families and children who have been affected by pediatric cancer. Becky is supporting a tremendous effort to raise public awareness of a disease that this year is estimated by the American Cancer Society to affect 10,380 children in the United States under the age of 15. Her daily efforts to bring pediatric cancer to the forefront honors the memory of her two sisters, Robin Ross and Rhonda Ross, both of whom lost their lives to cancer. Becky was born and raised in Orange County, California. She is a resident of my 48th Congressional District in Laguna Beach, California and a longtime employee of the Orange County Water District. I commend and applaud her unstinting work to support pediatric cancer research. It is my honor to join with my colleagues in recognition of Becky Mudd.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of my amendment to H.R. 1735, a sense of the Congress that Dr. Afridi, a hero of freedom and decency, is imprisoned and that Pakistan should release him from prison immediately. Last year, this very same amendment was adopted by the House but stripped during the House-Senate conference negotiations process. Yes, a short note of acknowledging this amendment was included in the fiscal year '15 NDAA Joint Explanatory Statement, but that amendment itself was nevertheless stripped. I intend to request a recorded vote to demonstrate solid bipartisan support for Dr. Afridi so that future conferees will take this language more seriously and include it in the final fiscal year '16 NDAA. Mr. Chairman, we need to make a statement in support of this American and international hero against terrorism. We need to support Dr. Afridi. If we abandon this friend, we put ourselves at great risk because he put himself at great risk for us. No amount of aircraft carriers will make us secure if we abandon our friends who stand with us. Dr. Afridi is the Pakistani medical doctor who helped pinpoint the location for Osama bin Laden, the terrorist coward who masterminded the massacre of 3,000 Americans on 9/11. Because of his cooperation with the United States, Dr. Afridi was tried and imprisoned by Pakistan's corrupt and oppressive government. That should be considered a hostile act by Pakistan against the people of the United States. Worse, after years of effort on the part of the United States to free him, Dr. Afridi continues to languish in a Pakistan dungeon. Yes, it is shameful we have abandoned such an heroic friend. All the while, of course, we continue to provide weapons and cash to his captors. Since 9/11 we have given Pakistan over $25 billion, the majority of which goes to the military and security services which they use to murder and oppress their own people, people like the heroic Baloch people or the Sindhis, who are struggling for their freedom under Pakistan oppression. It is a grotesque charade to suggest that our aid is buying Pakistan's cooperation in the war on terror or anything else. So long as Dr. Afridi remains left to suffer this brutal imprisonment, no Pakistani promise of cooperation means anything if they cannot get themselves to release such an heroic person who never should have been arrested and who risked his life for us. How can we believe they are not supporting or even arming or supplying the world's worst and most bloodthirsty terrorists? Pakistan has taken us for fools, and shame on us for being so stupid for financing a regime that so blatantly despises us. Mr. Chairman, my amendment will remind the Government of Pakistan and our own government that we have not forgotten Dr. Afridi nor his courageous actions, and it will remind other brave allies of freedom as well as intelligence assets throughout the world that the United States will not forget them if they risk their lives for us. We will not turn our back and leave them to suffer a terrible fate because they were loyal to us. Save Dr. Afridi. I ask my colleagues to join me in that statement, and Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.