Dana Rohrabacher

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Stearns]. (Mr. STEARNS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton], a champion of liberty.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, we have heard time and time again today several arguments in favor of keeping the current trade policy toward China. One is that if we change the trade policy that we currently have, that it is tantamount to walking away or tantamount to no trade at all, or tantamount to an embargo against China. I hope those who are listening, I hope those who are reading the Congressional Record, will note no one on our side of the aisle or our side of the debate, I guess I should say, especially myself, who is the author of the resolution, is advocating any of that. That is not what this debate is about. As far as I am concerned, that is not a legitimate part of the debate, although we hear it time and time again expressed. The fact is we are talking about the current trade status. Now, those who are opposed to my resolution accurately say that we are not talking about most-favored-nation status because it sounds like it is something more than our current trade status, but what I am suggesting is our current trade status is immoral, it is wrong both economically and strategically for the United States; in other words, that it does not benefit the United States to have the current trade status. Also let us note that during this debate, over and over again we have heard the other argument presented by the other side, which the main argument is that if we continue with our current trade status, it will mean a more prosperous China and a more prosperous china will be a freer and less threatening China. That is a theory. That theory has been proven, in reality for the last 9 years, to be absolutely 180 degrees opposite from what reality is. That theory is wrong, and I hope those people who are reading the Congressional Record will note that those making that argument are making it in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is wrong. China is becoming more repressive and has become more repressive, has become more belligerent and more threatening to its neighbors even though we have the current trade policy and we have renewed it since the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989. So the opposition to my suggestion that we change current trade policy is based on an incorrect analysis of reality, a theory that is not working and a straw-man argument that just does not hold water because that is not what we are advocating in terms of an embargo or walking away from China. What we are suggesting is that the current trade relationship with China hurts the American people, first. It hurts the American people. It costs us jobs. The argument that there are 170,000 jobs created by our trade relationship with China, that holds some water until we realize that our trade relationship with China costs the American people hundreds of thousands of more jobs, that our trade relationship with China is an attack on the well-being of the American working people. Now, certainly some major corporations benefit from our current trading relationship. There are some people making a profit, and there are some jobs being created. But clearly, but clearly when we talk about representing the interests of our people, the overall effect of our trading policy with China is to attack the well-being. We are putting our own people out of work by the hundreds of thousands so that a few corporate interests can make a big profit and a few other jobs will be created. So it is wrong, wrong, wrong economically. We are supposed to represent the interests of our people. If we are not here to represent the interests of our people, who is? Who is going to argue their case? Now, what does it represent as well economically? It means a $35 billion drain on capital from the United States which would be here for our people to build factories and such that now goes to China because they have a net benefit of $35 billion every year from their trade relationship with us. What do they do with that money? They spend that $35 billion producing a modern weapons arsenal that some day may be used to kill Americans. That makes absolutely no sense. They are stealing our technology, they are belligerent against their neighbors, they are in fact the worst human rights abusers on the planet today, and we are giving them a trade relationship that nets them a $35 billion benefit every year. This makes no sense; it is insane. And my last argument is it is morally wrong. As we celebrate our Fourth of July and as we celebrate those words of Thomas Jefferson and our Founding Fathers that put our country on a higher plane than just those people who would be making policy based on the self-interests of the economic elite of their country, we stand for freedom, we stand for liberty, and as long as we do, the people in China who will try to build a better China and try to build a more peaceful and prosperous China, they are being demoralized by our lack of respect for our own principles. Let us change the trade policy with China. To vote for most-favored- nation status is a morally bankrupt position.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. It is unbelievable. We have heard today the charge that those of us who are opposed to most-favored-nation status for China are talking about isolating and walking away from China. That is not the case. China is not a country to be ignored, but right now it is being run by tyrants and despots, and they are not a group of people that we should be providing advantageous trade relations with our own people. The question is whether or not Communist China should continue to enjoy the advantageous trade relationship that it has because it is enjoying the same trade relationship that we give to democratic countries. No one is talking about walking away, no one is talking about an embargo, no one is talking about isolating China, but does any one really believe we should give these dictators, these people who are bullying their own neighbors, who are stepping on the faces of their own people with their combat boots, we should give them advantageous trade relationship with our country? Every year since 1989, when the Tiananmen Square democracy advocates were massacred, we have seen the situation in China to continue to decline. The theory is, if we engage them, if we trade with them, give them this most advantageous trade relationship with us, things will get better. That is nothing more than a theory, and it is being proven wrong in practice. To continue to have our policies based on a theory that is not working is totally insane, and we will pay a price. In fact, the American people are already paying the price for that insanity. Granting most-favored-nation status to China while it is going in the wrong direction is exactly the wrong signal to send to these despots. What we are doing is encouraging those dictators to continue their repression, and we are demoralizing those elements in China that want a better world. Whose side are we on as we celebrate our fourth of July? Are we on the side of our own working people, on the side of those people who struggle for democracy, or are we just on the side of corporate profits? I do not believe that is what this country was founded on.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to associate myself with the remarks that we just heard from my colleague from Washington, DC. I thought they were articulate. I thought they were from the heart. I think they speak to every American that we should be standing together for those principles of decency and honor and love that should be the basis of the relationship between free people. Let us hope that there will not be racists that need to be protected and that we do not have to protect ourselves from church burnings and crowds because that will be exorcised from the hearts of every American. That should not be there in the first place. I thought those remarks were something to touch the hearts of all of us and help that process and make for all of us a better country. Today we need to stand together as never before as Americans, whether it is black or white or yellow or whatever race or ethnic background, because America is under attack as never before. We went through the cold war and we stood together. Now we are facing a world of economic competition. Our national well-being and the rights of the American people are under attack in a more insidious way. There will be a bill that will reach this floor shortly after the 4th of July called H.R. 3460. It is the Moorhead-Schroeder Act. I like to call it the Steal American Technologies Act because it will, if passed, result in the greatest rip-off of American technology in the history of this country and leave our people with a declining standard of living. They will never know what hit them because the fundamental rules that have provided us our technological superiority over our economic adversaries and, yes, over our military adversaries is being changed to the detriment of the United States. Again, most Americans will not understand what hit them. Even today it is hard to understand this piece of legislation. But let us remember, if people want to understand what this bill is all about, all the changes to date proposed in the patent law and the changes proposed in H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act, are part of an effort to enact into law a hushed agreement that was made between the head of the United States Patent Office and the Japanese patent office. I have a copy of that back in January 1994. I am now submitting this agreement that almost no American knows about between the head of our Patent Office and the head of the Japanese patent office to harmonize American law with that of Japan, meaning trashing the constitutional protections we have had on patent rights since the founding of our country and harmonizing our law with theirs, bringing down the rights of the American people in the name of harmonizing Japanese-American law. I will also submit a copy of a 1993 Japanese patent association recommendation list for the United States Patent Office. Here it is. I submit that for the Record as well. Guess what? Everything included in these recommendations are the things, are the provisions of H.R. 3460, which we are proposing, which this body will be voting on in the name of improving our patent law, making it exactly like Japan's. We are being told that these changes that are being proposed in our law are to prevent submarine patenting. They say that is the driving force behind H.R. 3460. How come then, if that is the driving force, it is the Japanese that are demanding that we make those changes in our law? These changes will put a stranglehold on American innovation and help bring down the American leadership in technology that has protected the well-being of our own people. What does it do? What are these recommendations? How is our law going to be changed? An American inventor who applies for a patent from this moment on after this law passes, up until now it has been secret what his patent application is until that patent is granted to that inventor. Now because of the Japanese request, we are going to publish every detail of every American patent, whether or not the patent has been issued to the inventor. That means every inventor, the details of every invention, every creative idea will be made public to every thief, every pirate, every Asian copycat in the world to use against us to bring our standard of living down. Proponents of the publication say, well, 75 percent of all the patents are already patented overseas anyway. That is an inaccurate figure that has been given to this body, and we will soon be giving the Small Business Administration and GAO figures on that. But what is more important is that overseas patent applications, unlike American patent applications, are only small in detail. What they want to do is publish every one of our secrets so that we can be destroyed economically. We must oppose H.R. 3460 and support the Rohrabacher substitute. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the following information: [From the Japan Patent Association, Sept. 1993] The United States Patent System and Practices Viewed From Japan: Nobody is Perfect background for preparing this document Intellectual property is drawing attention world-wide in recent years, and there are a number of developments in various countries including revision of their patent legislation, in parallel with the progress in the discussions on harmonization of patent systems proposed by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) which is in the center of these developments. The U.S., where the trend for protection of intellectual property intensified during the 80's, amended her IP related legislation and at the same time has been demanding the countries of the world, taking every opportunity and arena available to review their legislation towards strengthened IP protection. The United States expressed her very strong dissatisfaction especially against Japanese patent system, combined with the issue of trade imbalance between the two countries. The U.S. perception is expressed, for example, in the recent report from U.S.G.A.O. entitled ``Intellectual Property Rights. U.S. Companies' Patent Experiences in Japan''. On the other hand, U.S. patent system which has a number of marked differences from the patent systems in other industrialized countries of the world, embraces numerous problems both in its statute and practices which are found of concern from the point of view of Japanese IP practitioners. In this document you will find the major points the members of IPA, who are users of U.S. IP system have found unsatisfactory in the U.S. legislation and practices through their daily involvement with that system, and which they would like to see changed. 1. First-to-invent (1) The point at issue and general comments--Under first- to-invent system, the date of invention is established by means of interference process. But because the proof of date of invention made in a foreign country is not legally recognized even when the date of filing in the U.S. of the U.S. party is later than the date of filing in the country of the foreign party which is the basis of priority for the foreign party, the foreign parties in many cases give up their claim for their patent right, the cost factor involved also being a reason to do so. United States is now the only country in the world adopting first-to-invent system, and her early transition to first-to-file system is desired. (2) Specific problems-- A. 35 U.S.C. Sec. 104--Establishment of invention date made in a foreign country is not recognized except for the case with convention priority right. This article provides de facto for discrimination against foreigners. B. Interference--Interference requires a long and complicated process before the decision. Apart from the issue of time consumed in the process, the delay in patent grant caused by interference inflicts a serious inconvenience to the public in relation to patent term as explained in the following item 2. An applicant can intentionally modify the pending claim after looking at an issued patent, and apply for interference. A large amount of money is involved in interference leading to cases where the poorer party give up. 2. Submarine patents (1) The point at issue and general comments--Because there is no provision of public disclosure of applications, there is no way to know about a patent application currently pending, no matter how long time ago the application may have been filed. This creates a situation whereby it is never predictable when or what kind of patent should suddenly come up to the surface. Also because there is substantially unlimited patent term from the filing date, it is possible that those patents emerging from the oblivion of twenty or thirty years ago can exist for seventeen years from the date of grant causing, depending on the content of the patent, serious damages to the industry as well as to the public interest because of the characteristics of patent which can exclude uses of the invention by a third party. Industrialized countries in the world all have the systems for public disclosure of patent applications and ceiling for patent term from the filing date. The U.S. is urged to adopt these systems as soon as possible. (2) Specific problems-- A. The lack of the public disclosure system of applications--It causes inefficient double investments and disrupts effective employment of capital investments. B. The lack of ceiling for patent term from the filing date--As the delay in examination has no effect on the patent term, sometimes applicants intentionally delay examination inducing de facto extension of patent term, and effect substantial modification to the claims watching the trend in the industry. C. The lack of limits on the number of times or for the time-frame for division, continuation, or continuation in part of patent applications. This facilitates intentional prolongation of examination. D. On top of above item C, addition of a new manner which was not disclosed in the original specification is allowed with continuation-in-part application. No judgement is passed on what is a new matter or which claims are relevant to the added new matter during examination process. This in turn makes establishment of reference dates for novelty and non- obviousness difficult, causing the determination on the effectiveness of patent extremely difficult. (This problem raises major difficulty in practice as mentioned in item 4, below, in connection with the determination of patent effectiveness.) 3. Patent practice (1) The point at issue and general comments--Generally speaking, the level of examination on patentability could be improved, and the standards for judgement on non-obviousness vary widely. This is possibly due to budgetary problem. Many specifications demonstrate a large gap between the essence of invention and the expression of claims. In the practical area of examination process, improvements are due for requirement for selection of invention and the lack of clear definition for the extent of duty of prior art disclosure. (2) Specific problems-- A. The standards for judgement on non-obviousness vary widely, and there are noticeable cases where the level of judgement is extremely inconsistent. Many patents have been granted for inventions with doubtful non-obviousness, such as those for sheer numerical limitations without criticality, etc. B. Unclear patentability judgement on software related inventions. There are many patents that seem to claim practically algorithm per se. C. Restriction requirement to applications which are essentially contained in the unity of invention. Standard for issuing restriction requirement is unclear, causing financial and administrative burdens to the applicant. D. Unclear stipulation for duty of prior art disclosure. To try to construe on the safe side results in heavy administrative burden. It is especially true financially, when examination of corresponding foreign application, for instance, revealed prior art at approximately the same time for the U.S. patent grant, forcing the applicant to apply for continuation or to request for reexamination. 4. Review of patent validity (1) the point at Issue and general comments--Because there is variation in the quality of examination, many patents are granted with questionable patentability. It is difficult to confirm patentability (or non-patentability) of these patents without recourse to litigations. Although reexamination system has been introduced as a means of reviewing patentability of patents after grant, the system is not structured to function sufficiently. Aan improvement is promptly needed off reexamination system. Although it is possible to review validity of patents in court, there are various practical problems as described in item 5, litigation and patent infringement below. (2) Specific problems-- A. Imperfection in the system of request for reexamination--Under the current legislation, there are imperfections such as, only prior patents or publications can trigger a request for reexamination, the requesting person can only be partially involved in the reexamination, or no request for appeal is allowed in case of an unfavorable decision. Under these circumstances, an action with the objective of invalidating certain patents may end up in fortifying the patents in question, if the request for reexamination is rejected, of if the patentability is confirmed. 5. Litigation and patent infringement (1) The point at issue and general comments--It is said that U.S. society is a litigation society and patent disputes are also brought relatively easily to court. From our point of view, there are many disadvantageous aspects and problems including excessive discovery and the jury system. We will not elaborate on this however, and concentrate on patent litigation and patent infringement issues. The pressure for reconciliation, instead of going all the way seeking a just decision, is so strong because of the complexity of litigation processes, expensive lawyers' fee, unpredictable results due to the jury system, a very wide margin in the estimated damages in case of a lost case, etc. Also, it is difficult to predict a decision on patentability or infringement, especially a judgement on infringement based on doctrine of equivalents. Improvements in all these areas are desired. (2) Specific problems-- A. Discovery system--The coverage for discovery demanded by the opponent party is often too broad causing gross burden in manpower, time and money. B. Jury system--In case of trials highly technical in content as parent disputes, there are often instances where responsible results are hard to be achieved. C. Scope of infringement of process patent ill-defined--The acts constituting process patent infringement as described in the text introduced by the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 are ill-defined, facilitating an excessive demand for damages from the patent holder. D. Inappropriate determination of damages--There is no clear principle to base the calculation of damages. In case of willful infringement, 35 USC Sec. 284 rules that damages may be increased up to three times. The criteria for judging willfulness are not clear. E. Excessive patent marking obligations--It is stipulated that a patent holder who has not been marking patented products cannot demand damages to the infringing party on infringements occurred prior to issuance of a warning. According to precedents, patent markings must be applied promptly after the patent is granted, and a license must also adhere to this rule and the markings must be directly applied to product as much as possible. Such interpretations make the requirements extremely severe ones from the view point of business practice. 6. Other points (1) The point at issue and general comments--Patent legislation in the U.S. is markedly heterogeneous from the legislation in other industrialized countries of the world. Numerous resultant obstacles are observed in addition to those mentioned in the above items 1 to 5, obstructing effective patent activities in the United States in the daily patent management and application works carried out as a matter of course by average career patent staffs. There are also de facto discriminatory handlings of foreign applicants, and numerous regulations that are against the spirit of the Paris Convention. It is desired that the U.S. will promptly amend these points and have her patent legislation harmonized with that of the rest of the world. (2) Specific problems-- A. Discrimination of foreign nationals regarding determination of priority--An application filed in the U.S. with the application for right of priority in foreign countries may not guaranty the convention right, as it may not be possible to eliminate an application filed by a third party in the U.S. between the date of that foreign application and the date of U.S. patent filing. B. Assignee application not permitted--This restriction is causing major inconvenience in practice. Prior use should be recognized as a means of refutation in infringement dispute. C. Prior use not recognized--Prior use should be recognized as a means of refutation in infringement dispute. D. Complicated payments of post-issuance fee--Payment terms of post-issuance fees is too complicated. For example they become due by 3.5 years, 7.5 years, and 11.5 years after the original grant. If post-issuance fee becomes payable yearly as in the case of other countries, management on the patent holder's side will become much easier, and besides, reduction in the sum payable should become feasible.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. The gentleman would probably be interested in knowing that the day after Scharansky met with Ronald Reagan, I was in the Israeli Embassy at a reception honoring Scharansky, and through the crowed, he was the honored guest, he walked straight toward me and he came up to me and he said, I understand that you write Ronald Reagan's speeches and I said yes, that is true, and he said, I have often wondered who you are. Well, he knew that some people were behind Ronald Reagan and working with him to try to make sure that we took these bold stands and beat back the bureaucracy and the elitists in every country that would say, oh, do not make moral stands, do not make a stand of morality and a stand for freedom because it will rock the boat. But he knew, ever as a prisoner in the gulag, that I was there and other people were there. Today it is the same thing. Although they do not know us by name, they know that there are American people everywhere throughout our country who believe in the cause that George Washington talked about on the 4th of July, believe in what Thomas Jefferson was talking about and James Madison and our Founding Fathers when they started a country on a Declaration of Independence and a declaration that talked about the individual rights that are a gift of God to all people.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. But we do know that people have been executed in China only for opposing the regime?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If we had made that stand a few years ago instead of heeding those naysayers who said, do not let the moral stand, we are going to evolve China away, rather than making a tough stand, we would probably right now be voting to grant most-favored-nation status to a new and more democratic China.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. That is correct. I thank the gentleman very much, and I appreciate his jointing me. The second issue that I would like to discuss today is also an issue that deals with trade, interestingly enough, and the well-being of the American people and the relationship with others, because I believe what is pushing our most-favored-nation status with China at the expense of the American people is the same thing that is motivating us to destroy the American patent system. I would like to ask a question. What was one of the first things that Bill Clinton did after becoming elected President? The answer is, he appointed Bruce Lehman as Commissioner of the Patent and Trademark Office. What was one of the first things that Bruce Lehman did when he became head of that office? He hightailed it to Japan and met and reached an agreement with--this is an agreement that almost nobody knows about outside a few people in Congress--Mr. Wataru Asou, the commissioner of the Japanese patent office. They had a meeting with Mr. Lehman. That is right. These two unelected officials entered into an agreement which, if it holds, could change the face of the American economy as we know it. It could effectively remove America, and I predict will effectively remove America, from our economic predominance in the world. What is the intent of this agreement that I am talking about? Who knows about this hushed-up agreement between the head of the patent office in Japan and the Patent Office in the United States? The purpose of this agreement is to harmonize the American patent system to the Japanese system. Their intent is to take the best patent system in the world, that of the United States of America, the patent system that has offered the strongest patent protection of any country in the world, and in the name of global and Japanese harmonization of law, convert it into a mirror image of a system in Japan that has stifled innovation and creativity and kept the Japanese people under the heel of their economic elite. The Japanese system benefits large conglomerates. They crush any creative attempts by individual inventors. The Japanese system, which they are now trying--and, remember this, they want our law to be exactly like the Japanese law, and they are moving to change it, to superimpose that law on us--the Japanese system is so slow that it takes many years to grant a patent at great expense of the applicant. Turning abuse into injury, the Japanese publish every patent application in 18 months. By the time the patent is issued, years later, a phenomenon known as patent flooding has already occurred. What is patent flooding? We are going to know all about that, because we are changing our law to be exactly like their law. That is when patents very similar to the original idea flood the patent office, slowing the whole process and rendering the original application almost valueless, unless of course it is a huge corporation or a fabulously wealthy inventor who can defend himself. Even then it makes the process much more expensive. Where did the patent flooders get the information, in Japan to flood the patent office? The information, by the way, was just in the inventor's original patent application that had to be published after 18 months. By the way, under our system traditionally when you file for a patent, until you are granted that patent, it is a secret. Nobody knows. Thus an inventor has the incentive to invent things and to make an application for a patent and it is protected. Americans have always been the innovators of the world because we have had this system. Our patent system supports innovation. The Japanese, however, have been copiers and their patent system supports copying. The proof of this, and it is glaring, the United States has 175 of the world's Nobel laureates in science and technology. Japan has just five. Why would we want to change our system to make it more like their system? Global harmonization is the answer. That is what we are being told, although there are other excuses, but that is the main one, that we need to globalize all the rules of the game so we can have a global economy, and gutting the American patent system is the first step towards globalizing us with the rest of the world. Does it makes sense to everyone that we should just globalize our economy, even if it means gutting rights that have been inbred into our system for 200 years, that our Founding Fathers thought were sacrosanct? First let us recognize that the strongest advocates of a global market are not the advocates of free markets at home. Once the authority to regulate a global market is empowered, it will be too late. We do not appreciate most of the important things in our lives until we are on the verge of losing them. Americans will find that freedom in the economic arena has everything to do with controlling one's own destiny and determining one's own life. But the regulators of this global market on a worldwide scale will have little or no regard for the desires of ordinary Americans. The global market will be regulated by a new set of managers. It will be the arrogance of officialdom times 10. Huge multinational corporations may be able to thrive in such an environment, but individual citizens and small business will not. They will see what they have considered their rights as an American evaporate. There are those who believe that globalizing is good for America, and we understand that participation in the world trading system is essential for our economic well-being. I certainly believe in trade. As I say, I believe in free trade between free people. But we cannot sacrifice the rights of our people or especially destroy our innovative process to achieve this goal. What has been the factor that has given America the strength in the economic marketplace to maintain a high standard of living for our people even though many people overseas receive much less money in pay? It has been our technological genius and our innovation. That is what has permitted us to succeed and our people to prosper. What is being proposed is the sacrifice of the rights of Americans, the sacrifice of our future, of the standard of living of our people, all in the name of globalism and harmonization. Megabusiness, however, has a different approach. The cartels have no loyalty to the American people, and that is us. We are talking about us here. Those huge multinational conglomerates are profitmotivated and that is it. They now have a dream that they can maximize profits throughout the world and help trade flow through a global economy. The first step, however, in achieving that is putting the American people in their place. That means a lower standard of living, that means fewer rights, that means the individual no longer has the protections that the individual has had in the past. Phase one of this assault on America is the assault on America's technological rights because that is what has given us as Americans our leverage, our ability to ensure our freedom and to build a high standard of living for our people. The first step in this organized strategy to destroy our patent system was snuck into the GATT implementation legislation we passed about a year and a half ago. We accepted a fast-track system to pass the GATT implementation legislation because we were promised that nothing would be put into this legislation except that which was mandated by the GATT agreement itself. However, dramatic changes in the patent term were snuck into that legislation even though the position on patents in GATT just simply suggested that the patent term should be no less than 20 years from date of filing, which means, if one reads that, that we need not change America's current patent system. But they put the massive change--that may seem hard to understand but it will have incredible results--into the GATT implementation legislation. What did it do? Basically it eliminated the 17-year guaranteed patent term. A patent term, let me note, has been a right. A guaranteed number of years as a patent term has been the right of Americans since 1790, since the establishment of our Constitution. A patent office is actually in our Constitution. The implementing legislation created an uncertain patent term. We then took a guaranteed patent term and exchanged it in that implementation legislation for an uncertain patent term which dates 20 years from the date of application. That means, in the new system, and, by the way, the new system is nothing more than the Japanese system superimposed on us. It is much different than our past system and it is hard to understand but under the new code, the day the inventor files for a patent, 20 years later, his time is up. He has no more rights, he or she has no more rights to ownership of that patent. If it took 10 years for a patent to be issued in the past, the inventor still had a guaranteed term of 17 years. Under the new system, however, if it takes 10 years for a patent to issue, half of the inventor's patent term has been eaten up, it is gone, he or she will never get it back, and the clock continues to tick against the inventor, not against the bureaucracy. Every second that ticks is against the inventor. Anyone who has studied the process knows that it is not unusual for a breakthrough technology, and these are the innovations that changed the world, innovations like the airplane and the microprocessor and many others. I will explain a couple of those in a moment. Polyurethane plastic, by the way, which has changed our life, it took 33 years for the inventor to receive his patent. It took 17 years for the microprocessor and 21 years for the laser to receive their patent. These patents will determine the flow of tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of wealth. By making sure that they now receive almost no protection, because the new system would offer them almost no protection, it has changed the flow of wealth in the world. What does it mean when the clock is ticking against the inventor? It means the bureaucracy and special interests have leverage on the inventor, because he wants some reward for his creative invention. During the negotiations which are part of the patent granting process, the inventor, just like in Japan, will end up being ground down because now he or she is vulnerable. If a patent can be delayed, what does it mean? If they can delay the patent or shorten the time when the patent is actually in effect because he now only has half of his patent term because the rest has been eaten away, it means that those royalties that were once going into the bank accounts of American inventors, royalties from basically technologies that were created by Americans, those royalties will now be in the bank accounts of huge domestic and multinational corporations. These people will not be able to control their technology. To claim stolen royalties or to reclaim control over one's technology after these huge corporate and multinational interests have taken the technology, the individual American will have to pay lawyers and legal specialists to go to court. Have you got that? That is the little inventor in the United States versus Toshiba. Where do you think we are going to get on that? The little guy gets ground down, just like the Japanese people have been ground down over the years, now those same corporate interests will be here in our country grinding down our people. The Wright Brothers will be smashed by the Toshibas and the Sonys of the world and the aerospace workers that should be producing the aerospace technologies of the future may well not be American aerospace workers. Our people will be impoverished. This system, which our Patent Commissioner Bruce Lehman wants American law to emulate, has ill-served the Japanese people. Little, if any, innovation is born in Japan and few, if any, inventions start there. The Japanese, as I say, are rightfully known as copiers and improvers, and that is fine, they do a good job at that, but they are not innovators and inventors. Their laws, which Bruce Lehman wants America to emulate, have permitted powerful business conglomerates to run roughshod over their people. Their people have been beaten down. Anyone who raises their head gets beaten down over there. Now those same interests will have that same kind of leverage over American inventors. After successfully beginning this harmonization through the legislative maneuver which, as I said, went through the GATT implementation legislation, basically they got step No. 1, which is eliminating the guaranteed patent term for American inventors. But, now, we see step No. 2. Step No. 2 happens to be authored, it is H.R. 3460, the Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act which I call the Steal American Technologies Act. What this legislation does is finish the job of harmonizing our law like that of Japan's. In our country, the rights of the individual are paramount and these patent laws were meant to protect individual property rights. Basically, these individual property rights would be respected by our Government just as other property rights, of small farmers and businessmen and others who own property in our country, and this system of private property for the individual has worked well. We believe it is through individual endeavor and personal responsibility that someone prospers and when individuals as a whole population act in that way, the whole society prospers. Lehman's approach treats individuals as secondary, sort of as ants in a collective hole who, if they insist on rights for themselves, will be crushed. Of course, those trying to challenge our system will never admit this. The change is coming not as part of a major debate in our democratic process, but I believe these changes are coming, they are trying to sneak these changes through, hoping that none of us will never understand the complexities of patent law. Well, when one can force the advocates of these patent changes to engage, they claim their goal is not destroying the American traditional patent system, but instead they are going to solve a problem which they call, well, it is called the submarine patent problem. What is that? They believe some inventors, certainly a few self-serving inventors, may have been able to elongate the process in which their patent application was being considered; thus, if they put off the issuing date of their patent, they will have a guaranteed 17 years of patent. That means that some inventors will enjoy some royalty benefits in the outyears when, you know, if they had not gamed the system, they would have been receiving those royalties in the outyears. They would be receiving them in the in-years and perhaps after a length of time, certain technologies are more valuable. Well, making things worse, according to the other side, let us say someone games the system for 10 years. Some other companies may have decided to use that technology, which they have discovered independently, in some of their own products and then when the submariner finally allows his patent to be issued, well, then those other companies have to pay that submarine patenter a certain royalty. Now, this is all very confusing. But the fact is we are talking about less than 1 percent of all patents where people are actually able just to prevent their patent, through gaming the process, from being issued right away. And I agree, that is not something we should tolerate, but it is not something that will in any way justify, basically, the elimination of the guaranteed patent term and the obliteration of the patent system in the United States and replacing it with a Japanese system. The vast majority of all patent applicants, more than 99 percent, are doing everything in their power to get their patent issued. They are not submariners. They beg, they plead, please issue my patent, because that is when they know they can start earning their rewards. And if they delay, what is going to happen? They know if they delay their patent being issued, new technologies might come up and make their patent worthless. But there are a few submarine patenters, and they are a minuscule part of the system, and this problem can and will be dealt with and should be dealt with by patent examiners and by using the patent system as it is today, rather than eliminating the patent system and eliminating the guaranteed rights of Americans. My bill, in fact, includes a provision that we publish the application of any inventor who uses a continuance to intentionally delay the process. Over and over again in the year and a half that I have pushed this issue, I have offered to put many changes into law that will curb submarine patents as long as those changes did not eliminate the guaranteed patent term. But the other side never would come up with a suggestion except, oh, I am sorry, this is the problem, so we have to eliminate the guaranteed patent term. I was willing to compromise in any way just so long as you get those submarine patenters. There are a few of them out there. You know, sometimes when someone is unwilling to compromise and make a change like that, you maybe get the feeling that perhaps his real target was eliminating the guaranteed patent term and not correcting some minor problem, the submarine patent. Well, interestingly enough, there is a system in place in the Patent Office called the patent application and monitoring system, the P-A-L-M, the PALM system, which can and does print out the status of all pending applications in the Patent Office monthly, and if a patent has an unusual term of waiting, if an application is judged to be special by the Commissioner, he has the right to publish the application at any time. And this is in existing law. Thus it is already possible to solve the submarine patent. It is already solved. But this is being used as an excuse to destroy the guaranteed patent term in the United States of America. Well, history will judge their motives, but those claiming to end the submarine patent as their goal have refused every other method except eliminating the guaranteed patent term. By the way, this move to harmonize our laws with Japan happened long before anyone had ever heard of the word ``submarine'' patent and this whole idea of eliminating the guaranteed patent was part of that harmonization process. During the debate, Mr. Lehman has used the bogeyman of the submarine patents, and when we have checked his figures, we have found that many of the patents he claimed to be submarine patents, again, this is the excuse they are using to destroy our patent system, when we checked out the submarine patents, we found many of them had not been issued because the Defense Department had said this is a security risk, we have to keep these particular technologies secret. You can imagine what secrets will be made available to America's enemies if we just publish all of our patent applications after 18 months. My bill, H.R. 359, would restore the guaranteed patent term of 17 years and facilitate the action against those who are trying to manipulate the system and delay the issuance of their patent. I am offering this as a substitute to H.R. 3460, a bill which, as I say, is the next step in totally harmonizing our law with Japan. H.R. 3460, which I call the Steal American Technologies Act, better than anything else demonstrates what really is going on because it is understandable and its goals are easy for regular working people to understant what is happening. One of the provisions was introduced last year under a bill entitled the ``Patent Application Publication Act.'' This bill is now part of H.R. 3460 and is titled ``Early Publication of Patent Applications.'' The title is self-explanatory. That provision in this bill--hold on to your hats--mandates that after 18 months every American patent application, just like in Japan, whether it has been issued or not, will be published for the entire world to see. Every thief, every brigand, every pirate, every multinational corporation, every Asian copycat will be handed the details of every patent application. Our newest and most creative ideas will be outlined for them, for the thieves of the world, even before the patent has been issued to the American citizen. It is an invitation for every thief in the world to steal American technology. Lines will form at the copy machines and the fax machines to get this information out to America's worst enemies and our fiercest competitors. H.R. 3460 is entitled as I say, the ``Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act.'' The author of the bill suggests that we need not worry about an abrupt early publication of patent applications if domestic or foreign or multinational corporations steal the ideas; the patent applicants, once he or she gets the patent issued, can sue the pirates. Like I say, it is Toshiba versus John Q. American citizen. The price tag on this simple infringement suit, by the way, is a quarter of a million dollars, a quarter of a million dollars for just an uncomplicated suit. Our citizens who will be up against Toshiba, Sony, and even the Chinese People's Liberation Army, which is engaged in stealing our technology. As this bill was being passed through subcommittee, I was in my office with the president of a medium-sized solar energy corporation. When I asked what would happen if this provision became law, he clenched his fist and angrily predicted his Asian competitors would be manufacturing his new technology before his patent was issued, and they would use the profit from selling his new technology to defeat any court challenge that they had and destroy his company. On top of that, his overseas competitors would have a further advantage in the fact that they would never have had to invest in research and development to get the new technology they were benefiting from. This is a nightmare that faces every small- and medium-sized company. Anyone who cannot afford a stable of expensive lawyers is at the mercy of the worst thieves of the world. The big guys have the contacts overseas and the money to divert and deter such thievery, but it is open season on the little guys, on the average Americans. Of course, we will do everything we can to prevent this bill, but what is their goal? They say we have to do everything, we have to go, we have to destroy the American patent system, we have to make all of our technological secrets known to the world in order to protect us from submarine patents. Because a few people want to elongate the system on their patent and they will get 5 or 10 years more protection here, a few Americans, so we have to open up our system to this type of massive theft. I would suggest that maybe we should think about the arguments about the submarine patent argument. What they are telling us, it is sort of like you are going in to your doctor and saying, doctor, I got a hang nail here on this toe and it is really hurting me. The doctor says, I really am opposed to hang nails. Those hang nails are terrible and we are going to solve your problem. We are going to cut your leg off, we are going to amputate your leg. No, no, doctor, please. I just got this little hang nail down here. He says, I bleed for you, and he goes into a big lecture on hang nails, and at the end of it he says, well, we are going to cut your leg off. Well, if your doctor is telling you that to cure a hang nail, that he is going to amputate your leg, I think you better question your doctor's motives or maybe your doctor's sanity if he is trying to do that on you. Another major provision in H.R. 3460, it is the abolition of the Patent Office. That is right, H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act, will abolish America's Patent Office. Now, it is in our Constitution. Ben Franklin saw to that. Thomas Jefferson saw to that. It has played a vital role in protecting our property rights ever since then, yet now H.R. 3460 will separate the Patent Office from our Government, limiting congressional oversight. That means those of us who have been elected to represent the interest of the people will not have the same oversight after the Moorhead-Schroeder Act passes. It will remake the Patent Office into sort of a corporate-like private corporation-government corporation, sort of like the post office. Now, I am in favor of privatizing services when government does not have to do that, but this is a core function of our Federal Government. Protecting the rights of our people as we head into an era of technology, that is even more important. But we need the government to make sure of that. Who is there to determine and protect the intellectual property rights of our people? That is their core function all the way back since 1784. Well, along with corporatizing and taking away our congressional oversight, the civil service protection for our patent examiners will be stripped from them. It is like stripping the judge's robes off of him, and basically the patent examiners make judicial decisions that will affect billions of dollars worth of ownership in our society. It is the quasi-judicial decisions, and under this bill, they are not going to have any more civil service protection. It opens up our system to outside influences and to corruption that we have never had before. Taking away the civil service protection is a travesty, and these people who work at the Patent Office try their best, and even when they are protected, it is a hard job. If our Patent Office is corporatized, the head of the Patent Office, Bruce Lehman, Mr. Harmonize Our Laws With Japan, can make the changes he and his board of directors want with limited congressional scrutiny and recourse. Thus, in the coming era of technology and creativity, we basically will be decoupling the protection of patent rights from our Government, cutting off this congressional oversight, and leaving it in the hands of an autonomous board of unelected officials. Mr. Speaker, who is going to be on that board? Whose special interests will be represented on that board overseeing the decisions as to who owns what technology in the future? Maybe they won't even be people who have allegiance to the United States, who knows. But they will be making the decisions, and we do not know who they are. H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act, must be defeated. My bill, H.R. 359, the Patent Rights Restoration Act, can be substituted in its place when it comes to the floor of Congress for a vote. The choice is our choice as the American people, as Members of Congress. It is H.R. 3460, the Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act or the Rohrabacher substitute. One might ask why has a bill that is so obviously detrimental to America's interests, why has it gone this far? First and foremost, and this is a problem we talked about earlier, our big businesses have bought off on the idea of a world economy, and if harmonizing our patent rights is part of that deal with a global economy and even if our foreign competitors renege later, we must change our laws now as a sign of good faith to get everybody working together. This mindset is a great threat to the well-being of the American people. Second, let me say these huge corporations have enormous influence on Members of Congress. Your biggest corporation in your district comes to see you, the president of that corporation, you listen to that head of that corporation. But these corporate leaders are not representing the interests of their own working people, much less the greater constituency of the people of the United States. These corporate leaders may have good hearts and may be well intended, but they are wrong headed when it comes to globalization. Their loyalty should be in the long term with the people of the United States. Instead, what we find here are people who basically bought into an idea, we are going to create a whole new world, and it is going to be a more perfect world where commerce is flowing. Watch out, Mr. and Mrs. America, when you run into somebody who is going to change the whole world and make it so much better, even at the expense of the American people and our rights. That is the threat we face today, and right after the Fourth of July when this bill comes to the floor, H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act, has to be defeated and the Rohrabacher substitute should take its place.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. So we know that the Chinese dictatorship is willing to execute someone simply for exercising what we consider to be our rights as citizens and the rights of free people; we know that, and we also know that they are engaged in a ghoulish enterprise of after executing some prisoners, or executing prisoners in general, taking from them their body parts and selling them on the world market?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. When the American people see their Congressmen over the Fourth of July holiday, it would be actually a good moment to remind the Member of Congress that we should be standing up for what our forefathers believed in, these principles of freedom and individual rights, that this country was going to be better than just some conglomeration of people seeking profit and seeking monetary reward, that we do indeed stand for freedom. Before the gentleman leaves, I would like to mention one last story on this particular issue. I agree with him wholeheartedly when he says that no one could ever have gotten away during the cold war with suggesting we will make Russia better, this dictatorship in Russia better, by granting most-favored-nation status and transferring all of our technology to Russia. No one would have ever dreamed of that. Instead, we were strong and we were tough and when Ronald Reagan came in, his tough stand helped end the cold war and bring a greater potential for freedom and peace in the world than anyone had ever dreamed. Well, during that time period, there was a hero of freedom named Natan Scharansky. He was a Jewish man, a dissident in Russia who was a champion of liberty, and he was arrested and thrown into the gulag, and when we say the gulag, we are talking about the harshest of prison conditions that Americans cannot even imagine. There he was, struggling to survive in the gulag and his Communist captors said, all he needed to do is sign this document admitting that you were lying about the repression in the Soviet Union and admitting that you are some kind of a spy or something, and we will let you go, and he refused to do it. All he had to do was sign a piece of paper. Eventually, his fame spread throughout the world. Here was indeed a man, a lone individual, a champion of freedom standing up against a totalitarian power, and all he had to do to end his suffering was to sign his signature. Well, eventually we traded him for a Russian spy. We actually sent a Russian spy across a bridge and he went back another way, and when Natan Scharansky came to the United States, he made his way to Washington and to the White House where he met with President Reagan. As a speech writer for President Reagan, I will never forget that day because when he left the Oval Office, he met with the press corps and the reporters asked him, ``What did you tell President Reagan?'' And Natan Scharansky, this heroic individual, said, ``I told him not to tone down his speeches,'' not to tone down his speeches. He said, they were the only things. He said, I described for them in the gulag, and he was describing for these reporters how in the gulag, somebody smuggled in little pieces of paper that had Ronald Reagan's words of one of his speeches on it, and he said, as long as I knew that the President of the United States believed in these principles, there was hope, and it gave me the hope to struggle on.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I would ask the gentleman, are any of these people who are being shot, is there any evidence that they could be just people who are advocating democracy?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I join my colleagues in remembering the gentleman from Missouri, Bill Emerson, a decent, hardworking man who made great contributions not only to this body, not only to our country, but to the cause of a humane and decent world. We will remember him. He made major contributions to this legislative body. Mr. Speaker, today I will be discussing something that goes to the heart and soul of a moral society, a decision that we will soon make about most-favored-nation status with China. Then, after a brief discussion on most-favored-nation status with China, in which the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Wolf] will participate, I will give a longer presentation on a bill that will be introduced shortly on the floor of the House dealing with the American patent system and major changes that are being made in our patent system. First, Mr. Speaker, let me say that as we move forward to the day when Congress will be considering most-favored-nation status for China, we must recall that this happens every year. Every year we are told that we must grant most-favored-nation status for the Communist Chinese because it will help them evolve. The justification for not treating the Communist dictatorship like any other democratic nation, for example, like Canada, the evidence for not doing this is overwhelming. Unfortunately, it is not strong enough to overwhelm the dreams of prophets, the glimmer in the eyes of American capitalists and international corporate elites. Up until now they have been able to win the day by claiming that our economic interaction with this brutal, genocidal dictatorship on the mainland of China will help it evolve into a freer, less repressive society. But by now it should be clear to everyone that China is not becoming a freer, less repressive society. We keep granting most-favored-nation status, we keep having more international and economic interaction. Yet the Red Chinese regime, the last major Communist regime in the world, is becoming more belligerent, more repressive, and more contrary. It is becoming more contrary to the economic and moral interests of our people to continue this trading relationship that we have developed that is, as I say, the same as a trading relationship we would have with Canada or a democratic country. The gentleman from Texas, Dick Armey, said something that I have heard him say many times, and there really is some truth in it. I like to steal phrases from the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Armey], which he knows. Plagiarism in this case is a form of flattery. Mr. Armey said insanity is doing more of the same but expecting to get different results. Mr. Speaker, if we use this as our guide to our relations to most- favored-nation status relations with China, our policy is insane, because we continue to have the same policy of granting favorable economic status, as favorable as any other country in the world, but yet the situation continues to get worse. Economically, just economically, if we just judge it on that basis alone, they are the most protectionist regime of any that we are trading with. Yes, Mr. Speaker, they are permitted to flood our markets with their goods, putting millions upon millions of U.S. citizens out of work, while they protect their own domestic markets with huge tariffs, tariffs that can be 40 percent and 50 percent tariffs. What does that do? That means that in traditional economic terms, and those of us who do believe in free trade, and I happen to believe in free trade between free people, but when we take the equation the way the Chinese are having trade, they fought flood our market, and when economics would mandate, then those people laid off in our country would go to work for those factories that are now producing goods to sell in China, and what do we find out? We cannot sell our goods in China because they will not let our people go over and sell the washing machines and appliances because they have a protective tariff. They are protecting their own domestic industry. If America wants to invest in creating new factories over there so that our laid-off workers or unemployed citizens continue to be laid off and continue to be unemployed, that is okay with them. In other words, the Red Chinese are manupulating the system, and we have permitted them to do so, knowingly permitted them to do so, and that puts millions of our own people out of work, and benefits them to the tune of tens of billions of dollars of hard currency every year. There are a few companies here that benefit from the trading relationship. Do not get me wrong. Aerospace, which is a very big industry in my own area, in my own congressional district, does benefit. So do those who are selling raw materials and food. It is just that everybody else except those in aerospace or those selling raw materials and food, not everybody else but large numbers of people in our society, are actually being hurt dramatically and losing jobs. I happen to believe there are more jobs being lost in our economic relationship with China than there are being created. Who is losing? Regular working people. Who are really the main people who gain? A lot o people in the international financial community and the corporate elite. Basically, the Chinese continue economically in this relationship to basically serve themselves, but our government is not protecting the interests of our people while they potect the interests of theirs. The Chinese blatantly steal American technology, and over and over again what do we do? We accept their word. They sign a little piece of paper with a bunch of scribbling on it, and then we accept their word, OK, we will not bring down sanctions on you this year because you have signed this piece of paper. Then we act surprised again as it becomes close to the time to debate most-favored-nation status to find that there has been a wholesale violation of all the agreements they have made. We have had negotiating in the interests of the American people by people who are not committed to the welfare and best interests of the American people. Instead, we have had people who seem to be interested in a global concept of trade and commerce, and China has to be part of this. With that excuse we find Americans being thrown out of work, and our standard of living is slowly but surely edging down. At the same time, they steal our technology, they steal our intellectual property rights and use it against us. Of course, what are they doing with these tens of billions of dollars in hard currency that we permit them to make every year? That is a conscious decision that we are making, to permit them to make every year? That is a conscious decision that we are making, to permit the rules of the game to be that they are going to have all of these extra tens of billions of dollars. What are they doing? They are building up a powerful military that is currently being used to threaten their neighbors. And someday, if the United States gets in the way, those weapons will kill American citizens, America's defenders. What will they be killed with? With technology they have stolen from us, and billions of dollars of hard currency that we have permitted them to make as profit in an unfair trading relationship between our two countires. One last economic issue. Why do people want to have most-favored- nation status? Why do big businesses want to have most-favored-nation status? They could still officially sell their products over in China and other countries that do not have most-favored-nation status. The real reason behind this, the underlying reason, if you have most- favored-nation status with China, companies can get, how about it, government guarantees of their investments in this dictatorship. You can have the Export-Import Bank and OPIC and the World Bank and all of these financial institutions, which actually get their money from good old U.S. tazpayers, those taxpayers end up subsidizing, let us say guaranteeing, the loan for somebody who is going to do business in China. I will give Members one big example. This is mind-boggling. There is a $30 billion public works program that they want to build in China to provide electricity, called the Three Gorges Dam project. We have people in here who said we have to support the Three Gorges Dam project because that means jobs in the United States. The Chinese want us, the Western bankers and American taxpayers, to guarantee these loans to provide the $30 billion to build this big dam project. What are they going to do with their own $30 billion? The Chinese want to use their own $30 billion to build weapons so that someday, if the United States ever gets in their way, they can take care of our military. They want to spend their money on weapons to destroy people and to bully their neighbors, but they want us to provide the loans and the guarantees for those loans so they can build their great public works project. And what are we getting in return? Caterpillar is going to be able to sell their bulldozers, rather than having Japanese bulldozers down there. Let me just say this, Mr. Speaker. For those people who think that is a good way to create jobs, would it not be better for us to spend $30 billion and rebuild our own infrastructure and use those bulldozers, those caterpillars, here across the United States to rebuild our drainage systems and our sewer systems that are going kaput, the bridges that are about to fall down? That makes a lot more sense than spending $30 billion to bolster a Communist regime in hopes that they may evolve into more liberal, wonderful, beautiful people, just like the elite that runs our country. No, we should be thinking about the interests of the American people. That should be the basis of our negotiations. One of our problems is we have been sending the likes of Peewee Herman over to do our negotiations when we should be using Arnold Schwarzenegger. One last area in terms of most-favored-nation status. That is the following. It is not just an economic decision. It is not just a strategic decision for the United States in terms of the military. It is also a moral decision that goes to the heart of the United States of America: What do we stand for? Next week we will recess in order to celebrate the Fourth of July, when our Founding Fathers proclaimed that every individual has certain rights and those rights are granted by God. The Declaration of Independence was not just a declaration that we were no longer going to be under British tyranny, and it was not just a declaration that we would have democracy here. It was a declaration of the rights of the individual, and that no government has legitimate rights unless they receive them from the consent of the governed. It was a proclamation saying America will be a different kind of land, a different kind of country, and we would be a shining beacon of hope to the world and to the oppressed. Wherever they are, they can see there will be hope as long as the United States stands true to its principles. In this case, that is what we will be discussing, most-favored-nation status, right after we celebrate the Fourth of July. But the human rights violations and the tyranny on mainland China would tell us our Founding Fathers would roll over in their grave if they thought that we would have the same type of relations with this type of vicious dictatorship as we do with other democracies in the world. The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Wolf], who has been stalwart in the battle for human rights, has cataloged many of the abuses that the people of China have had to endure. I yield to the gentleman from Virginia so he can share with us some of the things that are going in China today.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, the House will soon vote on most- favored-nation status with China. That means should we have a trading relationship with this Communist dictatorship that violates the rights of its people, is belligerent against its neighbors, is helping in the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and a country that is now run by a group so hostile to the United States that it could well become our enemy in the future and possibly an enemy at war with the United States of America unless we do something? Mr. Speaker, this is not the time to grant that type of trading status, that grants this dictatorial regime the same status as we grant England and France and other democratic countries. We should put our foot down and say until we see changes in human rights and in their aggressive policies toward their neighbors and the stealing of American technology, we will not grant them this right. And if we do that, we will be protecting the interests of the people of the United States of America and we will be securing our future, because tyrants understand action. They do not understand platitudes, and up to this point they have only heard platitudes about human rights from the United States of America.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I agree that we voted today to get to the root causes and to condemn the hatred that resulted in the warped mind that resulted in the burning of black churches in America, or synagogues or any other kind of churches, that this is not something we can tolerate in America. But let us say the root causes of that type of bigotry are found in the same type of actions that try to limit people's right to speak because they disagree with you. They feel you have a right to prevent someone from speaking, whether at a high school graduation or a college graduation. Discourtesy is one step away from tyranny, and I have seen that throughout my life. Clarence Thomas is a man of extraordinary courage, honor, and intelligence. He has stood up against a liberal political machine that he knew would try to destroy him personally rather than debate his ideas. It is tragic that this mean-spirited attack continues on Justice Thomas. He deserves the respect of America and at the very least he deserves to be treated courteously. Unfortunately, many liberals do not know what the meaning of courtesy is. With that, let me say that one thing about America is that we have diverse values. This is something we rejoice in. We are a land of diversity. People cannot say it enough. This is a blessed land. Yes, it has faults, many faults. We will work together as Americans who love freedom to try to fix those faults. That is the way it has been since our founding. We had a lot of faults back then. While I am grateful to our Founding Fathers and our founding mothers, I do not idealize them as being perfect. But in those days 200 years ago, they did have a dream and they did give us something to work with, and we have built a great Nation. They began that great Nation and expect us to try to perfect it. Our Nation was founded not by Puritans alone--Puritans played a role in it--but also by malcontents, nonconformists, individualists, pathfinders, free thinkers, explorers, developers, people who were fiercely independent and lovers of freedom. Yes, there were also slaves that were brought here against their will, and we tried to correct that which was a major blot on America's soul. They were an optimistic lot, those Americans of 100 and 200 years ago, firmly believing that with liberty and technology, ours would be a shining city on a hill, a beacon of hope for all mankind, where our problems and our faults would be corrected but where the common man, even then, through hard work and responsible behavior could raise a family in decency, and all would have an opportunity to improve themselves and build a Nation as they did. This may sound like hyperbole but it is not hyperbole. Yes, we had faults, let us admit it. But the fact is we also had dreams. Those who founded our country were dreamers. They could see fields that would feed a hungry world and factories that would raise the standard of living of working people, and in times of great peril would become an arsenal for democracy to which freedom-loving people of the world could turn for salvation. They knew America would succeed. The fundamentals were here. Freedom, guaranteed rights for all people. Yes, in the beginning it was not all people. Today we have not totally reached that dream but that is what we are trying to do. Here was also this richness of diversity that would make America unique among the nations. Our new country would not be held together by a common culture or common race or common religion. No, it would be a love of liberty that would unite us and a commitment to the principles of liberty and justice that would hold us together. One thing else gave them an unbridled positive view toward the future. They believed that technology would lift the standard of all human beings with the production of new wealth. America would not be about dividing wealth, it would be about building, planting, engineering, and creating new wealth. After all, we were the most undeveloped country of the world at that time. Thomas Jefferson's home in Monticello is filled with his personal inventions, inventions of little technologies that he know would help lift some of the burden right there on his own farm and, if emulated, lift the burden elsewhere throughout the country. Ben Franklin was not just the grand old man of the American revolution. He was an internationally acclaimed technologist, having invented the pot-bellied stove, bifocals and having experimented with electricity. I do not even know if children these days, when they read their history books, know about Benjamin Franklin and his technological endeavors. They might not even know about Ben Franklin, for all I know. Well, it is no coincidence that our Founding Fathers wrote into our Constitution a mandate for the establishment of a national Patent Office where any person could register an invention and would have a guaranteed property right to ownership of that innovation for a specific number of years. This was to ensure that inventors and investors would have an incentive to create the means to solve problems and to uplift the standard of living of our people. The guaranteed patent term works. America had the strongest patent laws in the world and our people reaped an unimaginable reward. It was no mistake that it was here that Robert Fulton created the steamboat. How many people know that the steam engine was created long before Robert Fulton? In fact, in ancient Greece, there was a steam engine, but they did not believe the common person should have burdens lifted off of his shoulder, and in fact a steam engine had been put on a boat crossing the Rhine River much earlier but the boatmen gathered round and the boatman's guild forced that steam engine off the boat. But here Robert Fulton was able to put that steam engine on a boat and able to patent that concept and to create a piece of equipment that would change the world and uplift the standard of living of mankind. What about Eli Whitney's cotton gin, which created enough clothing for people to wear and brought down the price of clothing, or Cyrus McCormick's reaper, or Thomas Edison's electric light bulb, or Sam Morse's telegraph, or Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, things that changed the world forever. Where were they created? Where were they invented? Right her in the United States. In the late 1880's, it was seriously suggested, in fact, because our people had been so creative and created so much that the Patent Office be shut down because, ``Everything that can be invented has been invented.'' At that very moment, two working men, brothers who owned a modest bicycle repair shop, were working on a machine that would lift mankind into the heavens. Mr. Speaker, the Wright brothers demonstrated the indomitable spirit, what was hailed as exemplary, as the best of our country. Yet these two people were basically on their own. They had some investors. They were not men of education or wealth. They were ordinary working people who changed the lives of every person on this planet. So why has it been America? Why was it that those two individuals were able to succeed? Certainly not our race because we have many different races and ethnic backgrounds. It certainly was not our religion. We have many religions. It is not our great universities. The Wright brothers never went to college, although I will have to admit our educational institutions certainly have helped this. The genius, the unparalleled inventiveness of our people can be found in the fact that our laws have protected inventors. We have had the most stringent and all-encompassing patent laws and patent protection of any country of the world. Our laws have fostered private investment in innovation. The mainspring of America's progress can be found, above all else, in the guaranteed patent term and the honest enforcement of our laws, so that inventors knew their rights would he recognized and protected, investors knew they would be permitted to reap a reward for risking their money they invested in unproven technology. One of the lesser known inventors in America, a man who had tremendous impact on the living of our people, was a man named Jan Matzeliger. He came from the humblest of beginnings and for years he was eating corn mush and just barely surviving. Because he was an American of Color, a black American, he suffered unforgivable discrimination, turned away even from churches where he sought to worship God. As he labored in a shoe company, strenuously stretching, cutting and stitching, he visualized a machine that would revolutionize production. With little education, he wrote and traced his idea for a complicated piece of equipment. Living in poverty, he found a couple of old cigar boxes and strings to simulate a working model, and although he had no status, no credentials and certainly no collateral, he caught the ear and the eye of two investors who bank-rolled his venture for a hefty share of the profit. On March 20, 1883, a patent was issued by the U.S. Patent Office. Within a few years, Matzeliger's ``lasting machine'' is what it is called, ``lasting machine'' was standard equipment for shoe manufacturing. The price of shoes began to drop as the average worker, instead of putting out one or two pairs an hours, could put out 50 pairs an hour. The price of shoes was cut by 50 percent. Untold millions of people benefited from Matzeliger's invention. For Matzeliger and his investors, they had the guaranteed patent term of 17 years in which to reap the rewards of an innovation that had uplifted ordinary people. Matzeliger lived a fruitful life and a full life. When he died, he left a considerable sum of money to the churches of his community. But it was stipulated in his will that none of the money should go to any church that turned him away because of the color of his skin. America should have respected all the rights of all of its citizens, but even in that great time of discrimination, the rights of technological ownership, through the patent law, was so ingrained in our people that the patent rights of black Americans and people of color were protected. This commitment served our Nation well. Now, I am not saying that all of the patent rights and all the property rights of black Americans were protected because they obviously were not. But obviously they were protected to the point where this black American was able to benefit greatly from his invention. America went on and basically the history of our country can be seen in the development of these new technologies. We went from a desolate frontier to a powerhouse of freedom and opportunity. There were those who see the fundamental changes in America, and they are trying to affect what we do in America and they believe in America. But sometimes people who are trying to affect the course of our history are not so up front about their goals for our country. One of the things Bill Clinton did after becoming President, one of the first things he did was to send Bruce Lehman, his appointee, to head America's Patent Office to Japan. Now, is that not funny? Right after getting elected, he appoints someone to head the Patent Office and immediately sends him to Japan. There, Bruce Lehman, the new head of our Patent Office, concluded a hushed agreement to harmonize America's patent law to that of Japan's. Now, we got almost nothing in exchange for the changes, for exchange for our changes. We got almost nothing in exchange in the sense that the Japanese law did not change almost anything. In fact, there were just a few anemic restrictions that were placed on Japanese corporate interferences and that is about it. But we, on the other hand, changed and agreed to totally harmonize our patent law with that of Japan. Now that may sound really strange to the American people. It may sound really strange to our colleagues that someone goes overseas and makes an agreement to change the basic law of our land, which has been in place since the founding of our Constitution, and make it mirror that of a foreign country. We did that in exchange for some little anemic change in the Japanese law. By the way, that promise may be very similar to Japan's promises to open their markets. Decades ago, Japan promised us they would open their markets, and basically they promised and they promised and they promised. Yet decades later, we still are having trouble getting our goods into the Japanese market. Perhaps this even weak little thing that they gave us in exchange for totally changing our patent law, maybe they will treat that the same way as nothing more than scribbling on a piece of paper. In the meantime, Bruce Lehman and multinational corporations, are doing their God-awful best to change our patent law, our fundamental patent law. They made the agreement with the Japanese to do it. Mr. Speaker, now they are coming here with legislation to the Congress to fulfill their promises to change or law and make it like the Japanese law. Well, they tried to do it as quickly as possible and as quietly as possible. Step No. 1 was eliminating that guaranteed patent term of 17 years. This has been a right of Americans for American inventors and American investors for 134 years; before that, it was a guaranteed patent term of 14 years. But it was always a guaranteed patent term. No matter how long it took you to get your patent issued, once you had applied, if it took them 10 years to get it issued, you would still have 17 years of guaranteed protection. Well, trying to keep this downgrading of American patent rights quiet while, instead of coming to Congress originally with the very first attack on the patent system, and that is the legislation of changing our patent laws, a provision was snuck into the implementing legislation for the General Agreement on Trade and Tariff. Now that may sound odd as well. But you see, if you put something in that implementing legislation for the GATT Agreement, Congress was only able to vote up or down on this one omnibus bill. No amendments were allowed. Thus, a Member of Congress would be forced to vote against the entire world trading system in order to vote against changing our patent law. Many Members of Congress had no idea that they put this into there because this was total, the tactic was a total betrayal because we were told that the only things that would be put into the GATT implementation legislation was that which was required by GATT itself. It was a betrayal on our citizens. The Members of Congress should understand that that indicates some foul play is going on. GATT again did not require the eliminating of the guaranteed patent term, so it should never have been put in there in the first place. Well, I created a stir when I found out that in the GATT implementation legislation was this unnecessary or unrequired provision, something that would dramatically change our laws, and so that was 1\1/2\ years ago. I was promised that there would be a chance to correct this part of the implementing legislation, that eventually on the floor we would get our chance to change this. Well, changes in the patent term of course are not easy to understand. Those people who are trying to fundamentally change how our Government has acted and what or fundamental laws are on the patent term know that this is a difficult issue for people to understand. They are relying on that ignorance, on that inability of Americans to focus on the intricacies of these kind of laws in order to do us in and to bring down America as the No. 1 leading economic power in the world. Traditionally, when an American inventor or investor has filed for a patent, no matter how long it took, remember this was the traditional law, the Patent Office could take as long as they wanted, and many of the major patents take 5, 10, even 15 years. But once it was issued, there was a guaranteed patent term of 17 years to reap the benefits of new technology. Foreigners or anybody else would use that technology who have to pay royalties to those people who invented the new technologies. Again, it was their right to a guaranteed patent term of 17 years, and up until 1\1/2\ years ago, when that provision was snuck into GATT and the first move to harmonize our system with Japan's was put in place. During the time before, and this is before this change, when the patent was issued, everyone was secure in knowing they would have that 17 years of full benefit. This system not only encouraged inventors but it encouraged investors. Thus private dollars by the billions have been allocated in our society for developing new technologies. Matzeliger's two investors knew that, no matter how long it took him to get that patent, that, once he got it, they all would benefit from this invention because they would have a guaranteed patent term of 17 years. We did not rely on Government bureaucracy. We relied on private investors. We did not rely on taxes by the Federal Government. We relief on innovation through the private sector because we gave people an incentive to invest by guaranteeing a patent term. We relied on freedom and the profit motive. Well, the new system, which is nothing more than the Japanese system superimposed on us, is much different, though again it is very hard to understand the significance of these changes and these differences. Under the new code, and that is under the code that was put in under this GATT implementation legislation, the day that an inventor fights for a patent, that day 20 years later he has no more rights, he or she has no more rights to that patent and to that technology. Twenty years later, and the time is up. If it takes 10 years, and, by the way, this is the system now in place that replaced the old system, if it takes 10 years for a patent to be issued because the bureaucracy is slow or outsiders are trying to slow down the process, in the past the investor still had the guaranteed patent term of 17 years, even if it took 10 years to issue. Under this new system, after 10 years one-half of the investor's patent term has been eaten up. He or she only has 10 years left. In other words, the clock is ticking against the inventor, against the innovator, and not against the bureaucracy. Now, anyone who has studied the process knows that it is not unusual for breakthrough technologies, that is the innovations that change the world, these are the innovations that we as Americans always invented, that the innovations that produce the tens of billions of dollars of new wealth often take from 5, 10, and even 15 years for a patent to issue. For example, the laser took 21 years before the patent was granted. That means under the new system, the inventor of the laser would have received no benefit, zero benefit, from his invention, and the investors in that project would have reaped no benefits. The microprocessor took 17 years. The microprocessor took 17 years. Under the old system, once it was issued that man had 17 years of patent term left. Under the new system, he would have 3 years left. Polypropylene, the plastic they make in which they use to store milk and other containers, took 33 years before the inventor received the patent. He would have had absolutely no patent protection, and in fact would have probably died a dissolute person knowing that his invention had been stolen from him. Now, what does this all mean when the clock is ticking against the inventor? It means the bureaucracy and special interests, not only domestic interests, but foreign interests as well, have leverage on the inventor. During negotiations, which are part of the patent process when someone is looking to get a patent granted, he has to go through these negotiations, the inventor, if the clock is ticking against him, he can be ground down, because he will or she is vulnerable. If a patent can be delayed and the time shortened, what does that mean? Well, it means all those royalties that were once going into the bank account, if you can shorten the time period that the person actually holds that patent, because now you elongated the process and he only has that 20 years, and it is ticking against him, all those royalties that were going into the bank account of American inventors, because they have that 17 guaranteed years, now they do not have it. All that money that used to be flowing into their bank accounts is now rerouted into the account of huge foreign and domestic and multinational corporations. To claim stolen royalties, of course, someone is eventually issued a patent. An individual must pay lawyers and legal specialists to go to court. Get the picture? The little American inventor going to Samsung or going to Mitsubishi or going to Sony and trying to beat them in court, especially in a Japanese court? The little guy in our country gets ground down. The Wright Brothers, had that law been in place, would be smashed by the Mitsubishis of the world. Now, get that. The Wright Brothers, the equivalent of a Wright brother today, beaten down by Mitsubishi, and we end up in the years ahead with the Japanese building all of the major airplanes flown all around the world, and Japanese aircraft workers living at a higher standard of living, and our aerospace engineers living in poverty. This system which our Patent Commissioner Bruce Lehman wants to emulate, he wants American law to be like the Japanese, has ill-served the Japanese people. It might have helped some of these big corporations and those people who run the corporations, but little, if any, innovation is born in Japan. Few, if any, inventions are started there. The Japanese are rightfully known as copiers and improvers, not inventors nor innovators. Their laws, which Bruce Lehman wants America to emulate, have permitted powerful business conglomerates to run rough-shod over their people. They have beaten down anyone who raises his or her head. As far as technological development, in Japan an inventor who applies for a significant patent is immediately confronted with hostile interferences with the process. Pressures, official and unofficial, are applied to beat down the applicant so that by the time the patent is issued it is a hollow shell. The rewards are limited. However, the rewards are great for some people in Japan. Yeah, the big guys, the giant corporations envelop the innovation and pay little, if anything, in royalties for the benefit they receive, or should we say steal. It is the difference between a society based on individual freedom versus collectivist egalitarianism. During the patent debate that we have been having here over the last year, Bruce Lehman, the head of the American Patent Office, constantly claimed the purpose of a strong patent law is to facilitate the dissemination of information to the society as a whole. That is the ultimate in antifreedom, collectivist freedom, and has nothing to do with what our Founding Fathers had in mind. In our country, the rights of the individual are paramount. These patent laws were meant to protect individuals' property rights over the rights of necessarily some huge interest group claiming to speak for the benefit of society as a whole. We basically believe the individual has the right to own his or her prompt and especially if it is his or her own creation. That is what our Founding Fathers did when they put the Patent Office into our Constitution. Our respect for the property rights of the small farmer and the individual businessman is based on an understanding that by protecting the rights of the little guy, especially the property rights, all of us are going to benefit in the long run. We believe it is through individual endeavors and personal responsibility that someone prospers, and when a population of individuals acts in that way, the society prospers. Lehman's approach treats individuals as secondary and in a collectivist whole, who if they insist on their rights for themselves, must and will be crushed. Of course those trying to challenge our system will never admit this. Those trying to change the fundamental patent law will never believe that is what is really guiding them and that is their philosophical premise. A change is coming, not as part of a major debate, basically a major debate in our whole democratic process. That is not the way the change in our society and patent rights for future technology is happening. Instead, it is happening by subterfuge, sneaking provisions into treaty legislation or an omnibus bill so that the evil that is taking place will be hard to understand and the actual changes will be obscured by all the rest of the things in the bill. When one can force the advocates who are trying to press these patent changes, when we force them to engage, they claim that their goal is not to destroy America's traditional patent system. That is not what we are trying to do, they say, no. Instead, they are trying to solve a new problem that has been plaguing American business, and that is this problem that basically is enriching inventors. They say these inventors are being enriched, and these inventors are the ones manipulating and gaming the patent system so that by the time that a 17-year patent term is actually granted to someone, that they have actually more time to collect on the other side of their patent. What they throw up as an excuse for changing the fundamentals and eliminating the right of Americans to a 17-year guaranteed patent term is something we call the submarine patent. Well, that is what they say. You people are gaming the system. Certainly, that is true. A few, a very few self-serving inventors have been able to elongate the process in which their patent application is being considered, thus putting off the issuing date, which means that the 17 years of patent protection which they are guaranteed end a little bit later rather than a little bit sooner. Of course, they are not getting the protection up front as well during that time period. Some inventors enjoy royalty benefits then in the outer years, and if they had not gamed the system they would not be receiving the same benefits in the outer years of their 17-year guaranteed patent time, because their patent would have expired. Well, making things worse, according to the other side, if the system is gamed for a number of years, let us say somebody is able to game the system for 10 years to prevent their patent from being issued. Other companies may come up with the same idea and those companies must now, because the other person has already applied for their patent, those other companies must pay royalties to the submarine patenter when he comes to the surface and gets his patent. Because a patent application is secret until the patent is issued, the other companies did not even know they were going to have to pay royalties for using this innovation. Thus, it is a ripoff and unfair. That is the argument on the other side. Submarine patents, however, may or may not be the problem. Whatever. That some people game the process, well, that could be true, but that is no excuse for eliminating the guaranteed patent term of the American people. That is like saying if someone abuses the right of freedom of speech, that we can come in and destroy people's right for freedom of speech. Or someone abuses a religious freedom, we just eliminate the religious freedom guaranteed our people. Let us remember this: The vast majority of all patent applicants, and I am talking about more than 99 percent, are doing everything in their power that they can possibly do to get their patent issued as soon as possible. They beg, they plead, please, issue the patent, because they will not receive any benefits until it is issued. By the way, those people who are gaming the system to elongate the process, some new invention might come along that makes their invention obsolete and they are taking that chance. That is why almost all inventors, nearly all inventors, do everything they can to get the patent issued right away. As you know, this new innovation could leave them behind, whether they are submariners or people trying to get through the process and the bureaucracy is not issuing the patent. A few submarine patents do represent a minuscule part of the system and have been a problem. So this problem can be dealt with by reforming the process, not by eliminating the guaranteed rights of all Americans. My bill, in fact, H.R. 359, which will be on the floor as a substitute to the Steal American Technologies Act, H.R. 3460, includes a provision to publish any application of an inventor who uses a continuance to intentionally delay the process. Over and over again, in the year and a half that I pushed on this issue, I have offered to put into law anything that would curb submarine patenting, which some people claim is a big problem and I am saying it is a minuscule problem, but I will do anything, put it in my bill, just so long as the change does not eliminate the guaranteed patent term. Let us have it flagged. If someone is delaying it, let us try to change it by getting administrative change. Let us make sure that if someone is delaying the process, it goes to a special board to make sure they cannot delay it. But the other side would have no compromise. They would not agree to any changes, except eliminate the guaranteed patent term. Why? Because that is what is in the Japanese law. In order to harmonize Japanese law, that is what we had to do. So, what was their motive if they were not going to change the law? It might have been they wanted to harmonize our law with Japan, and submarine patent, well, maybe that was just something used as an excuse or perhaps they were really upset about it. But whatever it is, let us say this: That if someone tells you that they are concerned about your health and you are complaining to a doctor, you have trusted yourself to someone to make a medical decision for you, and have a hangnail on your foot, if that doctor insists on cutting your leg off in order to correct that problem with your hangnail, you better get a new doctor. And that is what they are proposing here. We have a submarine patent problem that affects a minuscule number of people, so we are going to destroy the patent rights of all of the American people to a guaranteed patent right. Well, that makes no sense. And if a doctor tried to tell me, well, no, I am really concerned; I am concerned about your health, and that is why we are going to cut the leg off. And when I say, well, do you not want to clip my toenail off rather than cut my whole leg off? No, no, we will cut the leg off, then you will not have any more hangnails. You should say wait a minute. Maybe you better think twice about that person's motives when he is trying to sell that kind of logic. Let me note that this change we are talking about which they implemented in the GATT implementation legislation was the first crucial step in harmonizing our patent laws to those of Japan, and that is what I assume is the real goal of this legislation of H.R. 3460, which will be coming, and the real purpose of these people's activities. Let us note this push for the harmonization with Japanese law started long before anyone ever heard of the term submarine patent. This has been going on for 10 years now, and yet no one ever heard of submarine patents all those years ago. Those words were not even part of the patent lexicon when the attempt was made to dismantle America's patent system and harmonize it with Japan so long ago. During the debate over patent law, Mr. Lehman has used the bogeyman of the submarine patents; yet when we have checked his figures, we found many of the so-called submarine patents he has spotlighted are not issued and published. Why? Yes, there are some patents that have not been published and not been issued for a long time. Do you know why? Almost all of them, not almost all but a huge portion of them are defense-related technologies. Yes, the figures Mr. Lehman has given trying to say these are submarine patents, a lot have been not issued because they deal with sensitive defense technologies we did not want the world to know about. But, again, if it is a problem in terms of having people game the system and delaying the application, we can handle it with basically administrative reforms, rather than totally obliterating the system and eliminating the guaranteed patent term. My bill, H.R. 359, would reinstate the guaranteed patent term of 17 years and facilitate any action against the manipulation of the system. Then, by mandating the publication of applications of people who are intentionally delaying the system, we could prevent them from delaying the system and having a submarine patent. I am offering this as a substitute for H.R. 3460, which is a patent bill designed basically to complete the destruction of our current patent protection system. And basically this whole maneuver to destroy our patent system and replace it with the Japanese started, step one, with the GATT implementation legislation. H.R. 3460 is step two, and better than anything else it demonstrates what is really going on. This one is easy to understand. It is understandable to the point that it unmasks the goals of the very powerful international as well as domestic forces that are at work trying to change our patent system. H.R. 3460, which I call the Steal American Technologies Act, is officially called the Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act, is a package that obscures the mind-boggling provisions that it claims by lumping it together with other things, but not enough to obscure the real facts. One of the provisions introduced in this bill was introduced last year under a bill that was entitled the Patent Application Publications Act. Now this bill is part of 3460, the Patent Application Publication Act, that was really a title people could understand. Basically, it is early publication of patent applications. People can understand what those words mean. The title is too self-explanatory, so that is why basically they changed it to the Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act. The provisions of this bill, now get into this, because everybody can understand what is going on when they hear this, this bill mandates that after 18 months every American patent application, that is every application of our innovators and our creators, when they apply, all this was always kept secret until the patent was issued in the past. Well, now it is mandated that every one of those applications, whether or not a patent has been issued, will be published for the world to see. Every thief, every brigand, every pirate, every multinational corporation, every Asian copycat will be handed the details of every application to our patent office. Our newest and most creative ideas will be outlined for them, even before the patent is issued to the American inventor. It is an invitation for every thief in the world to steal American technology. Lines will form at copy machines and fax machines to get this information out to America's worst enemies and our fiercest competitors. H.R. 3460 is entitled, as I say, the Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act. Again, the provisions that we are talking about, it is almost mind- boggling that someone could, without shame, promote this on the floor of the House. The authors of this bill suggest that we should not worry about if domestic, foreign, and multilateral corporations steal the new ideas. The patent applicant, once he gets the patent issued, which may be 5 or 10 years down the road, they can sue the new applicant, can sue the pirates once he has been issued that patent. The price tag on a simple infringement suit begins at one quarter of a million dollars. Boy, that makes you feel good, does it not? The average American is now going to be up against Sony, Mitsubishi, Honda, you name it, every company in Japan, and you might even have to go to court in Japan or China or Thailand, or anywhere else, in order to fight them. And you have to pay your legal bills and they have got the profit from your technology already to use as the basis to beat you in court. As this bill was being passed through the subcommittee, this bill already passed the subcommittee and the committee, I was in my office talking to the president of a medium-sized solar energy company in Ohio. And when I asked what would happen if this provision became law, he clenched his fist and angrily predicted that his Asian competitors would be manufacturing his new technologies before his patent was issued; that they would then use the profit from selling his new technology to defeat any court challenge and destroy his company in the process. His overseas competitors would have the further advantage, get into this, of never having to pay for the research and development of that new product in the first place. The Americans flip the bill, they use it, they develop the technology, profit from it, and they beat us in court with money that we have had to pay to develop the technology in the first place. This is a nightmare and it faces every American small and medium- sized company. Anyone who cannot afford a stable of expensive lawyers is at the mercy of the worst thieves in the world. Of course, the big guys and the huge corporations are backing this change in our law because they want to globalize the world trading system, even if it means diminishing the rights of the American people. Those big guys, they have the contacts overseas to make sure their products are not being stolen, and of course they have the money to spend on lawyers to deter such thievery. But for the little guys, it is open season. Of course, we must do this. You have to remember, now, the reason we are doing this is to prevent the evil submarines, these evil submarine patenters who might elongate their patent by a couple of years. We have to make everybody in this country, we have to make them vulnerable to the worst thieves in the world because there are a few people who might want to elongate their patent protection for a few years by gaming the system in a submarine patent. Yes, I am sure that is really what it is all about. This provision is another part of harmonizing our patent law with Japan, and that is what this is really all about. It is not about submarines. That is baloney. Another provision of H.R. 3460 is, hold on to your hats because here is another provision, it is the abolition of the U.S. patent office. It is in our constitution and it has played a vital role in protecting the American people and the rights of the American people for all of these years. Yet now, H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act, will separate it from the Government, limiting congressional oversight. Now it is part of our Government, so Congress has a right to investigate. It will limit congressional oversight. H.R. 3460, the Moorhead-Schroeder Act, will make the patent office into a Government corporation, sort of like the post office. Now, I am in favor of privatization of services that our Government need not provide. Corporatization of a core function of Government, however, is a terrible idea. Something that the Government should do? Should we privatize all the judges in our country? Basically, we are trying to corporatize and take out of the Government's sphere the job of protecting the intellectual property rights of our people. This has been a core function of our Government since 1784. Along with corporatization, by the way, what comes with that? That is the stripping of our patent examiners. They do not have any oversight by Congress, or very little, and then they will strip these patent examiners of their civil service protection. This opens up all of these people to outside pressures and influences. These are the individuals, these patent examiners, who work really hard. They are trying to make determinations, basically quasi-legal decisions, to determine who owns what. Well, taking away their civil service protection is like stripping the robes off a judge. It opens the door to corruption of the entire process. And if the patent office is corporatized, the head of the patent office, guess who it is, Bruce Lehman, Mr. Harmonizer of our laws with Japan, can make the changes that he and the board of directors want to make, with very limited congressional scrutiny, of course. In the coming era, when technology and creativity will be more important than ever to determine America's future, we are, through H.R. 3460, decoupling the protection of patent rights from our Government, cutting it off from congressional oversight and leaving our people in the hands of an autonomous board of unelected officials. Who will be on that board? Unelected officials representing Lord knows what special interests will be represented on that board. Foreign and domestic special interests. These people will be making determinations as to who owns America's technology; basically determining our well-being in the future, which depends on America's leadership in technology. The Steal American Technologies Act, H.R. 3460, which will be coming to a vote here in Congress next week, must be defeated. And my substitute, the Rohrabacher substitute, should take its place, which is basically the Patent Restoration Act. That is the choice our Members of Congress will have, H.R. 3460, the Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Bill or the Rohrabacher substitute. One might ask why has a bill as obviously detrimental to America's interest gone so far as it has? First and foremost our big businesses have been bought off, or they have bought off, excuse me, on the idea of globalizing the world economy and harmonizing our patent rights as part of that deal of creating this new global economy, basically, even if our foreign competitors renege later. We are going to make sure we make these deals now to create the global economy, even if our competitors renege on the deals they are making right now. So we are going to change the law now, the patent law and other things, to create the global marketplace, and that is going to be a sign of good faith so that these foreigners that are making deals with us for our global economy will not go back on their word. Huge foreign and domestic and multinational corporations have been visiting individual Members and lobbying hard, spending loads of money, buying their influence peddlers around town. And sometimes those influence peddlers look just like former Members of Congress, interestingly enough. And that is a big factor of why this thing is sliding through Congress. Second, the Members of Congress hear from the biggest companies in their district, and it makes a difference if the biggest company in your district comes to you. You do not say, well, you do not represent the interest of the people as a whole; you do not even represent the interest of our employees. They do not say that. They listen to what that big boss in that company has to say. These big company executives with the dreams of a global market dancing through their corporate heads basically have no, absolutely no commitment to the rights and the well-being of the American people because they are secondary to this great dream. If somebody has a dream to renew the world, watch out, brother. Whether it is a Communist or anybody else, if they are going to redo and make this world into a nirvana, watch out. In this case they are going to create a new global marketplace, and in the process, what is going to happen? If in order to accomplish this they have to cut deals to bring down the rights and standard of living of the American people, so he is equal to other people's rights, well, they are willing to do it. We cannot allow that to happen. Finally, there is another factor. Two Members of Congress pushing H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act, these two Members are retiring from Congress. Mr. Moorhead and Mrs. Schroeder are asking Members to support their bill because it is their swan song. Carlos Moorhead has worked long and hard here and he is a good man. Mrs. Schroeder has worked long and hard, and I am sure many people agree with her basic philosophy. Well, they are asking others to basically, well, even if you do not agree with us, vote for it because it is our swan song. Do it as a favor to us, as a tribute to our many years of service. That is true. They want people to vote in that way to do them a favor, voting for legislation that will determine America's economic competitiveness and the standard of living of our people for decades to come. After the subcommittee markup of this bill, most of the Members I spoke to did not even know that H.R. 3460 mandates the publication of all patents issued or not, whether those patents have been issued or not after 18 months. They did not know that the bill obliterates the patent office and corporatizes it, stripping away any Civil Service protection from the patent examiners and limiting congressional oversight. The people on the committees did not even know this. I talked to them and they were oblivious to it. They knew they were giving Carlos Moorhead and Pat Schroeder their swan song, the last big piece of legislation that they wanted. We cannot permit this unsavory tactic to succeed, as much as we all admire in our respective parties Carlos Moorhead and Pat Schroeder, and we do admire them, they have worked long and hard here for the things they believe in, the votes on this issue are as vital to America's futures as anything I can--I have never seen anything that is more important than this coming through this body. We cannot vote on something so important to America's future as a part of a tribute to someone in their last year of office. If they want a swan song, give them a commemorative coin, but do not destroy America's technological advantage. The swan song argument is nothing less than no argument at all. They have not been arguing at all. They have been using the pressure of huge corporations who have no loyalty to the well-being of the American people and no loyalty to the values that we talk about overseas. This battle will determine, this battle that we are in will determine if America remains the number one technological power in the world, and these huge corporations are in talking to every Member of Congress. The only argument that the authors of this are giving is, please pay us a tribute. They are going to, one way or the other, Members are getting hammered on this. This is the ultimate, when we really look at it, the ultimate little guy versus big guy fight. Standing for the Rohrabacher substitute and a strong American patent system is a coalition that includes the NFIB, small business organizations and every inventors association in the country is supporting the Rohrabacher substitute. Over 50 top research universities and colleges nationwide who rely on patent income to bolster their research programs are supporting my substitute, including Harvard, MIT, the University of Florida, LSU, Columbia, Northwestern, the University of Wisconsin. Also strongly supporting the Rohrabacher substitute for H.R. 3460 is Patent Office union, these men and women who struggle and work so hard to try to be diligent in their work who are going to find their entire civil service protection stripped from them. On the other side is just about every big business organization you can imagine. With interlocking directorates and foreign ownership, no one can be sure how much foreign and multinational influence is being exerted on this issue. But it is considerable. Who will win? It is up to the people. Members of Congress need to be personally contacted. H.R. 3460, the Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act, which I call the Steal American Technologies Act, must be defeated and the Rohrabacher substitute put in its place. This vote could well come to the floor early next week. Anyone who needs more information, by the way, interestingly enough, if someone wants to read the bill in fact for themselves, they can. It is available on the Internet. The terrible details are there for the American people to see. If someone has got a home computer, they can get it on the Internet and take the time, if they want to take the time, to go and do this and to download the information and see it for themselves. They actually, they can actually go to their internet computer and get the copies of the bills and try to decide for themselves. It is available at WWW dot House dot gov and then slash Rohrabacher. That is R-o-h-r-a-b-a-c-h-e-r. Here is the internet information again: www dot house dot gov slash Rohrabacher. So this decision that we are about to make in this body will determine the well-being of our people, the standard of living of every American. It will determine the competitiveness of the United States of America and it will determine our future. Is the United States going to be a shining city on the hill, a shining city of innovation and progress, sparkling there, or a backwater subservient to the dictates of a global elite? A land of free, prosperous people looking to the future, or a Nation looking back and wondering why and how we lost our edge in the world? Together we can make democracy work. H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act, can be defeated and our rights to the best technology in the world and to make sure America is the technological leader in the world can be restored by the Rohrabacher substitute. It is now time for people to become part of the democratic process. Those people who are trying insidiously to change the law in a way that would, 10 years down the road, be a sneak attack on the well-being of our people, they are basically confident that they are going to win because they think this issue, the patent issue, that people are going to yawn or they will not be able to understand it or will not be able to understand just what is going on here. They are thinking this is going to slide through Congress because they have got these big corporate heads calling on Members of Congress. Unless we take the power in our own hands and participate in the system, which is what our Founding Fathers wanted us to do, I believe that Thomas Jefferson today would be so proud that internet is being used to give people the actual wording of the bills that are being considered here on the floor of the House of Representatives. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, they would say, that is exactly the kind of society we had in mind because we knew America would not be perfect. The Founding Fathers knew there would be special interests working in our country, but they knew and they trusted in the free people of this country to get involved. Let us make sure we do get involved. Let us make sure that Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who are looking down on us today, will know that we have picked up the torch because we are, after all, the children of Thomas Jefferson. We will not give up our rights, and we will fight for this democratic process. I would invite all of my colleagues to join me in this effort to ensure that the American people's right to a decent standard of living, to freedom beyond anywhere else in the world, that that right, those rights are protected.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to remove the name of the gentleman from California [Mr. Fazio] from the list of cosponsors of House Joint Resolution 182.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to warn my colleagues that powerful interest groups are involved in one of the most insidious attacks on the well-being of the American people that I have seen in my 8 years in Congress. It is an insidious attack because a decade from now, if these powerful interests succeed, America will have lost its competitive edge, the standard of living of our people will be in decline, and they will never know what hit them. What is happening is an attack on America's ability to remain the number one technological power in the world. America has had the strongest patent system in the world. Our citizens have enjoyed patent protection that other citizens in other countries have not enjoyed. Thus, our inventors and investors in new innovation have given us technology that has provided the American people with a standard of living far beyond those overseas, and has permitted our people, even though they receive more money for their work, to outcompete people who receive less pay overseas. The American people have enjoyed the technological lead that has given us the light bulb, the telegraph, the telephone, the reaper, the steamboat, and, yes, the airplane. Today our standard of living is tied to technology and in the future will be tied even more to technology, but today we see our patent system, which has done so much for our people, under attack and targeted by powerful foreign interests and multinational corporations. These powerful interests have already eliminated the guaranteed patent term of 17 years, which was the right of Americans for 130 years, and it was eliminated in an underhanded fashion by slipping it into the GATT implementation legislation, even though that change was not mandated by GATT itself. Now for the knockout punch. We will soon have a bill come to the floor which will end patent protection in America as we know it. The bill, H.R. 3460, which I have labeled the Steal American Technologies Act, is really named the Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act. This piece of legislation will demand, mandate, that every American inventor, when he applies for a patent, after 18 months, whether or not that patent has been issued or not, it will be published for the world to see. Every single detail of new American technology will be available to the world to steal. Every pirate in the world and the Asian market will be producing our technology before our patents are even issued. It also eliminates the Patent Office itself, something that has been part of our Government since the Constitution, and replaces it with a corporatized Patent Office, meaning a semi-Government, semiprivate corporation, like the Post Office, which has very little of the congressional oversight that the current Patent Office has. By the way, that same move strips patent examiners. These men and women who have dedicated their lives to making the judicial decisions as to who owns what technology, they will be stripped of their civil service protection, inviting corruption: First, publication of every last secret we have to the pirates of the world; second, stripping our patent examiners, our line of defense, against corruption, of their civil service protection. Finally, this bill will offer rights to foreign corporations, as well as huge American multinational corporations, to challenge existing patents. Our technology even today will be under attack when the people from all over the world will be able to come in with huge finances and force our people to defend the patents that have already been granted them. America's corporate giants, strangely enough, have signed on to this technological rip-off. First, they would like to rip off the little guy themselves without having pay royalties, and many of these giant corporations in our country have interlocking directorates and investors from all over the world. They have signed on to destroying the American patent system as we have known it for the last 130 years. This is truly a battle between the little guy and the big guy. H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act, is being pushed through the system by big business. Small business, the investors, the NIFB, colleges and universities that get monies from royalties from their own inventive processes, they are behind the Rohrabacher substitute for H.R. 3460. This will be a battle that determines America's future, but the American people will have trouble understanding it. Let us hope they call their Congressman to let them know they will be watching and America's interests should be protected.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, does the gentleman believe that it is possible that the White House received all of these files from the FBI and that perhaps they were just trying to look into one or two people in those files that they really wanted to get, and that the rest of those files were just a cover against, a vendetta against individuals that they do not want to admit who they are?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Will the gentleman yield for a question?

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I am here tonight to discuss a bill that will be coming to this body next week or the week thereafter. A bill that will dramatically--dramatically--change the patent laws of this country. Mr. Speaker, it is a bill that I believe is part of an insidious attack on the well-being of the American people. They will not even realize how horrible it is and the impact that it will have on their way of life until many years after. Only when it has long since been passed will the American people wonder what it was that hit them, why their standard of living is going down, why America is no longer able to compete. Mr. Speaker, the American people are used to being the leaders on this planet. We have been, and this has been called the American Century. But let us never forget that America used to be the most underdeveloped country in the world. We were a desolate frontier, and now the American people have turned a desolate frontier into a house of freedom and opportunity in which the common man in the United States of America lives a decent life and knows that his children have an opportunity to improve their well-being as well through a system that encourages innovation. Yet there are those who seek to change some of the fundamental underpinnings of American prosperity, and at times they are not always up front with their goals. Today, I believe the incredible attack that we see coming on the patent system of the United States of America is part of this type of approach where people are seeking a change in America, but we are not certain exactly where they are coming from. One thing is for certain. Bill Clinton, shortly after becoming President, sent Bruce Lehman, his appointee to head America's patent office, to Japan. There Bruce Lehman, now the head of the American Patent Office, concluded a hushed agreement to harmonize America's patent laws with those of Japan. It may surprise those who are hearing this speech tonight that an unelected official--the head of our Patent Office, Bruce Lehman--signed an agreement and that an agreement has been reached. It is in writing: to harmonize American law, change our law so that it is in harmony with Japanese law in terms of the patent law. What we got, by the way, for agreeing that our law would change and harmonize with Japan, is almost no change in the Japanese law in return, except for an anemic restriction on corporate Japan's interferences with the patent process. But like Japan's promise to open its markets decades ago--I remember this 25 years ago when they were talking about opening their markets--no one has any idea when their weak concessions will actually be put into effect or whether those weak concessions are simply scribblings on pieces of paper until they are forced, decades from now, to actually pull back from the things that they agreed to if we would change our law. In the meantime, however, Bruce Lehman and the multinational corporations are doing their god-awful best to change our fundamental patent law, to harmonize it to make it look exactly like the law of Japan over these many years. They have tried to do this as quickly as possible and as quietly as possible. Step No. 1 was eliminating the guaranteed patent term of 17 years which has been a right that Americans have enjoyed--American inventors and investors have had as a right--for 134 years. Before that, there was a guaranteed patent term of 14 years, from the time of the founding of our country until 134 years ago. This guaranteed patent term has been part of our rights and part of something that has actually been written into the Constitution. Trying to keep this downgrading of the American patent rights quiet--instead of coming to Congress with legislation changing our patent laws--a provision was snuck into the implementation legislation for the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs [GATT]. That may sound odd, but Congress could only vote up or down on this one omnibus bill that came before us, the GATT implementation legislation. No amendments were allowed. Thus, a Member of Congress would be forced to vote against the entire world trading system in order to vote against this insidious change of our patent law. This tactic was a total betrayal of those of us who voted for the fast track process of GATT, because we knew that we would only get an up or down vote. That is what the fast track was all about. But we were told if we would vote for fast track, then nothing would be included in the GATT implementation legislation except for that which was absolutely necessary and required by the GATT agreement itself. That is not what happened because this change was not required by GATT. This insidious, absolutely underhanded way of passing this change in our patent law, should tip off our citizens and should have tipped off Members of Congress that there is something that has gone afoul. GATT did not require eliminating this patent change so it should never have been in the legislation implementing GATT. I created a stir when GATT came to a vote. That was over 1\1/2\ years ago. I was promised a chance to correct this part of the implementing legislation. We can take it out of the implementing legislation. We can change the law and still be GATT consistent, because this was never required by GATT in the first place. Changes in the patent term, of course, are not easy to understand. Most people do not understand the importance of them. They know it is important for America to be the No. 1 technological power in the world. But patent term: That is kind of confusing. That is exactly the area where America's enemies know they can strike and know they can get away with this type of effort--a blow to the well-being of the American people--because the American people will not realized what is happening. Traditionally, when an American inventor or investor filed or a patent, no matter how long it took that patent to be issued by the Patent Office, once it was issued, the owners had a guaranteed patent term of 17 years to reap the benefits of their new technology. They actually owned the technology for 17 years. Anyone who would use it would have to give them some sort of a fee for using it, a royalty, it is called. They created the technology. It would not exist without them. This was a wonderful way to promote innovation in our society. It was, again, their right to a guaranteed patent term that was the basis of our system. We had the strongest patent protection of any country in the world. I will say it worked so well for the United States, almost all of the major inventions of our age and of the last century came from America, which was a very small and weak country at the time. The light bulb, the telephone, the reaper, the steamboat, of course, the airplane, all of these things came from Americans because we had a strong patent system. During the time before the patent was issued, Americans knew, under the old system, that they were secure, that even though it would take a long time for them to get issued that patent, that they would have a full 17 years to benefit. So people knew they would invest in something and they would expect a reward. That is why we invented all those wonderful things that changed our lives and uplifted the standard of living of our people. This system not only encouraged inventors but also investors. Private dollars by the billions have been allocated in our society for developing new technologies. We did not rely on government bureaucracy or taxes or government interference. We relied on freedom and the profit motive. It worked for the United States. The new system, which is being foisted on us, is nothing more than the Japanese system superimposed on us. Again, it is very difficult to understand this and understand the significance of the changes, these changes in our system and what it will mean in changes in our lives. Under the new code, meaning the old, the Japanese code superimposed on us, the day an inventor files for a patent, 20 years later his time is up. If it took 20 years, if it took 10 years for a patent to be issued in the past, the investor still knew he had 17 years because when it was issued, he had 17 hears to reap the benefit. Under this new system, meaning the Japanese system, after 10 years one-half of the inventor's patent term is gone. It is eaten up. He or she only has 10 years left. The clock, in other words, is always ticking against the inventor and not the bureaucracy. Anyone who has studied the process knows that it is not abnormal for breakthrough technologies, meaning technologies that will change our lives and change the world, innovations that will create tens of billions of dollars of new wealth, it is not odd for them to take 5, 10, or 15 years to go through the patent process. There are many, many examples of this. Yet these people under this system now, with their patent terms eaten away, would have no time to benefit from it. What kind of incentive does that give for investors who invest in people's breakthrough technology in their ideas? Now, what else does it mean? What does it mean for the clock to be ticking against the inventor? It means the bureaucracy and special interests now have leverage on the inventor that they never had before. During negotiations which are part of the patent granting process, the inventor can be ground down because he or she is now vulnerable. And a patent can be delayed and the time shortened. And what does that mean? It means that all of those royalties, if now you only get 10 years of patent protection, really, that is left on your clock because it has taken that much time to get the patent issued and you only have 10 years left, what does that mean? It means that royalties that were once going into the bank account of American inventors are now rerouted into the bank accounts of huge foreign and domestic and multinational corporations. These people who used to have to pay royalties the whole time now will end up having to pay royalties only part of the time, if any of the time, because there might not be enough time for the inventor to recoup the money necessary to fight in court the big corporations who are ripping off his product. To claim stolen royalties, an individual American must pay lawyers then and legal specialists and go to court. Under the old system, the Americans were protected. Under the new system that is being installed, the Japanese system, Americans are at risk. The little guy gets ground down. Under the old system, the Wright Brothers invented airplanes and lifted mankind into the heavens. Under this system, the Wright Brothers would have been ground down by Mitsubishi who would have probably ended up controlling their technology. And we would have gone to airports filled with Japanese airplanes reaping the benefits for that society. This system, which our patent commissioner wants America to emulate, has ill-served the Japanese people because what has happened, although they have been able to grasp technology from others, there has been almost no innovation and creativity in Japan. The fact is, the Japanese are rightfully known as copiers and improvers, not innovators and inventors. This is because new inventions basically benefit a very small elite in Japan. Their laws, which Bruce Lehman wants America to emulate, would have permitted and has permitted in Japan powerful business conglomerates to run roughshod over the people. They have been beaten down, when anyone raises his head. And those very same interests now will be able to come to the United States of America and run roughshod over our inventors. As far as technological development, as I say, Japan basically has shown very little, very little, very little example of innovation in their own society because once an innovator does step forward, once an inventor does produce some sort of significant invention and tries to patent it in Japan, all of a sudden that inventor experiences pressures, official and unofficial, that are applied to beat him down. And so his rewards are limited. However, the rewards of the big guys, the giant corporations, are very great there because they can envelope new innovation and pay very little in royalties as compared to their counterparts in the United States. Unfortunately, we now are having that system superimposed on us. It is the difference between a society that is based on individual freedom versus collectivism and egalitarianism. During the patent debate, Mr. Lehman constantly claimed the purpose of strong patent laws is to facilitate dissemination of information to the society as a whole. That is the ultimate in antifreedom collectivist thinking and has nothing to do with what our Founding Fathers had in mind. In our country the rights of the individual are paramount. These patent laws were meant to protect individual property rights over those supposed needs of the society because we understood that protecting the rights, the property rights of the small farmer and the individual, the individual businessman, that this will indeed benefit all of us in the long run because individuals will then put out the maximum of effort. And they will have more personal responsibility, and it will create a prosperous citizenry. This is what creates a prosperous country. Mr. Lehman's approach treats the individual as secondary, ants in a collective hole who, if they insist on their rights, must be smashed by the boots of those in power. Of course, those trying to challenge our system will never admit this. Those trying to superimpose this Japanese system on us. The change is coming not as part of a democratic process, of course, so they do not have to tell us about it. It is coming by subterfuge, sneaking provisions into a treaty legislation or an omnibus bill so that basically this evil will be obscured from view. When one can force the advocates into a debate, what they say is the reason why they are pushing all of these things is the fact that there is a submarine patent threat out there. Well, a submarine patentor is someone who has tried to elongate the system here. They have gamed the system. Thus, the date for a patent being issued to them is put off and they have a few more years in the outyears to collect some royalties. That is what a submarine patentor is. Now, there have been some examples of that, and the fact is that that is a problem that can easily be corrected administratively, but this problem has been put up as a straw man to excuse this incredible fundamental change in our society and the diminishing of American patents rights. Basically, they could have corrected the problem. It is like someone with a sore toe and someone telling them, ``In order to get rid of your sore toe we are going to cut your leg off.'' ``No, no, no. Please. I can correct the sore toe. I will put something on it that will make it better.'' ``No, no. We are going to cut your leg off to get rid of your sore toe.'' Now, when someone tells you that, maybe you have to question they do not have your best interests at heart, and that is what is happening with the submarine patent issue. You see, the vast majority of all patent applicants, 95 percent and up if not 99 percent, do everything in their power to get their patent issued. You know, please issue it now, right away, because that is when they will start to benefit, when their patent is issued. They know that if they hold off, they may be left behind by other innovations, and let us note this: Those people claiming that the submarine patent is, in fact, the reason why we have to change the patent law, do they not realize these are part of the very same forces that were trying to change the patent law before anyone ever talked about submarine patents, before anyone ever knew what that meant. No, the fact is the real motive behind most of those people who want to change, the real motive is they want to harmonize our system with Japan because it will create a more global trading system. Well, history will judge what happens by, you know, what they accomplish, by what they are trying to do and what happens to the American people. Let us note that this is the first step in harmonizing our trade with Japan, and I will have to say that Mr. Lehman has used the bogeyman of submarine patents to get some Members of Congress to believe that that is a reason for this terrible change in our system that will have such a horrible impact on our society. But again, if a submarine patent is a problem, we could work together and get it cured and get it corrected with just administrative changes within the system. I, in fact, had a bill, H.R. 359, which would reinstate the 17 years of a guaranteed patent, but at the same time we included a provision that would basically stop the manipulation of the system. Yet when I put the provision in when it was suggested by others, that was not enough, and then again I said, well, let us put more things into this bill, let us put more things into this bill which will guarantee you cannot have a submarine patent just so long as you do not eliminate the guaranteed patentor, just as long as you do not cut your leg off in order to cure the sore toe. But, no, no one was ever willing to offer that as an alternative. No one ever came up with suggestions for me with that, because the real purpose was to eliminate the guaranteed patent term. Now, we face another piece of legislation. The fact is the guaranteed patent term was eliminated by the GATT implementation legislation. Well, I will be trying to restore that as a substitute for a bill which will come to the floor next week, H.R. 3460. It is a patent bill that is basically designed, their patent bill, H.R. 3460 which will come to the floor, and I have a substitute which I want to substitute for that bill, but their bill basically is designed to complete the destruction of our patent system, and basically it is the next step from what they did when they snuck this first provision into GATT which will then totally harmonize us with Japan. H.R. 3460, which I call the Steal American Technologies Act, is being put forward. Now, the official title is the Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act. Well, better than anything else it demonstrates what is going on. It is very understandable to see what some of the provisions do, and it is very understandable to see the powerful international interests that are at work in this legislation. H.R. 3460 is a package that obscures some of the mind-boggling provisions, but if you look closely you will be able to see it. One of the provisions was introduced last year in a bill entitled the Patent Publication Act. See, they had to change that now. They had to make it the Moorhead-Schroeder Act because the Patent Publication Act is too blatant a description. The title was too self-explanatory, in other words. That provision, which is part of this bill, H.R. 3460, mandates that after 18 months every American patent application, whether or not it has been issued, will be published for the world to see. Please try to understand what I am telling you today. We have a bill that is insisting that every new idea of American technology will be made public, will be public, and thus every thief and brigand and pirate and multinational corporation and Asian copycat in the world will be handed the details of every idea that we have got. They will be standing in line. The Xerox machines will be running, the fax machines will be running, and our ideas will be overseas, and they will be in production of our new technology to use against us before our own people are issued the patents. It is incredible, but of course that is part of the Japanese system, so we have to have it here too. That is part of the Japanese system. Everything is public, and thus they can beat down the individuals who are creating new technologies. Our newest and creative ideas, as I say, will be out before the public and out before our adversaries even before our own people can go into production, and H.R. 3460, as I say, is entitled to Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act, and this provision, as I say again, it is almost too mind-boggling for the public to believe, but please believe it. That is part of the bill, that is the purpose of the bill, and basically this bill is passed, has already passed subcommittee and full committee. When it was going through the subcommittee, I will never forget it. I was in my office, and there was a man from a medium-sized solar energy company from Ohio in my office, a president of his company. He had helped start that company and built it on his own creative ideas. they had lots of patents, and I told him what the provision of this bill was as it was going through subcommittee at the moment that I talked to him. I said, what if you have to publish your patent application before the patent is issued, and he said, ``My gosh, our Asian competitors will have it in production, they will be making profit on my technology. It I try to go to court, what they will do is they will used the money, the profit they receive from my technology, to beat me down and destroy my company.'' He was right. That is what will happen if we let them get away with it, and this is something we cannot let happen. Now, when full committee, which this bill has already passed through full committee, when someone was asked, when an advocate of this bill was asked, is that true? Everyone will have to publish their patent application? They were told, ``Oh, no.'' That has been taken care of. Yeah, do you know how that has been taken care of? In order not to get it published, a patent applicant has to withdraw his patent. That is all. You just have to withdraw your application, meaning you have to give up on getting a patent. That was an untruth. That was an untruth. That was something that was wrong information that the people had in the full committee. They were told that it was taken care of, but that was not what they consider being taken care of, that unless you withdraw and do not push forward for a patent that your patent will be published. This is the nightmare that will face every small-and medium-size company, that they will have their own technologies used against them by foreigners and they will be put out of business. Anyone who cannot afford a stable of expensive lawyers will be at the mercy of the worst thieves in the world, and the big guys are the ones, of course, our big companies have the contacts overseas. They can defend themselves. In fact, they would not mind stealing some of the technology from the little guys here themselves. It will be open season in our country on the little guy. Of course, Mr. Speaker, we are told we have to do this to prevent this evil, the submarine patents. There are a few people who are elongating their patents by a few years, and that is very evil. Thus, we have to do all this other stuff and permit this other vulnerability for everybody in our country in order to solve that problem. We have to cut your leg off in order to correct that hangnail that you have on your toe. Another major provision of H.R. 3460 is now basically, hold onto your hats, is the abolition of the U.S. Patent Office. They are advocating we eliminate the U.S. Patent Office, which has been part of our Government since the founding of our country in 1790. Yes, under H.R. 3460, basically our Government will eliminate the patent office, which eliminates congressional oversight, by the way, because they are going to set up a new patent corporation, sort of a quasi-independent government corporation like the Post Office. Members know I am in favor of privatization. I am a conservative Republican. But this corporatization of a Government function, of a core Government function, it is the Government's job to protect our individual rights. It has been part of our system since the founding of our country. This is not the way to privatize Government. We cannot do that, because that is the job of the Government. Mr. Speaker, basically the patent examiners, and by the way, by making it a quasi-corporate structure, congressional oversight is taken back, but what also happens is that the patent examiners, these men and women who have dedicated themselves to a fair adjudication of American applications for patents, these people work hard and they struggle, and it is a tough job, but it is a judicial function, because they are making decisions as to who owns billions of dollars of technology. These people are going to be stripped, they will be stripped of their civil service protection. This opens up everything to corruption. It opens it up to outside influences. Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? If the patent office is corporatized, Bruce Lehman, the minister of harmonization with our laws with Japan, he is going to head the patent office, and he will be a virtual dictator of that office compared to what now it is, when we basically have it being part of the Government rather than a semi-private operation. These changes are destructive. They will work against the best interests of the United States. It is transparent, the corruption that will be created, and the special interests from all over the world who will be trying to interfere with a system, a system which has served us so well and kept America ahead of the pack, ensured that the United States of America had a middle class, people who had decent lives because we had technology that permitted us to outcompete our adversaries economically and defeat our military adversaries when our country was in trouble. H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act, that is the Moorhead- Schroeder bill, patent act, it must be defeated. The Rohrabacher substitute, which I will offer on the floor, which restores American patent rights, must be passed. It is something we have to do to protect the well-being of our citizens. Huge companies have been opposed to this proposal. It is up to the American people. The American people have to weigh in, or huge corporations, multinational corporations, will have their way. So far we have the support of small business, the little guys, every small inventors organization in the country, even American universities. But the big corporations of the United States of America have weighed in because they have a vision of a global market, and who cares about the rights of the American people or the standard of living of the American people. It is this global marketplace which is more important. Mr. Speaker, we can make democracy work here. We can defeat the big guys if the little guys get together and make sure that they are contacting their Representatives in Washington and demanding that a piece of legislation so detrimental to our country's well-being, the Steal American Technologies Act, is defeated, H.R. 3460, and that the substitute that I am proposing, the Rohrabacher substitute, is placed in its stead. Now is the time for us as Americans to stand together and tell the elites of the world we will never see our rights diminished by any kind of global vision. We will make sure that our children have a better life, because we are all the children, and all of Americans will always be the children, of Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. We will never give up the rights that they gave us as their legacy.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, next week this House will have a chance to vote on H.R. 3460, the Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act, which I believe should be entitled the ``Steal American Technologies Act.'' Members of the Committee on the Judiciary yesterday were given inaccurate answers to questions, and this bill passed right through that committee and will be heading toward this floor next week. The bill mandates, mandates that every patent application that is made to the United States Patent Office be published after 18 months, whether or not the patent has been issued. Do my colleagues understand what that means? That means every new idea our people come up with, whether or not they have been issued the patents, it will be published for the entire world to see. It is an invitation to steal every new American technological idea. It is an insane mandate, and it is in this bill. The bill also obliterates the Patent Office and resurrects it as a quasi-independent corporation, like the post office. Only with that, congressional oversight is limited and patent examiners are stripped of their right of civil service protection. It is an invitation to steal American technology. H.R. 3460 must be defeated.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Schumer-Royce amendment eliminating funds for market promotion programs. The 104th Congress has been constantly struggling to get corporate welfare out of the budget. Last year we missed a perfect opportunity to prove to the American people how serious we are about cutting spending by failing to get rid of the Market Promotion Program. Believe it or not, Mr. Chairman, the Market Promotion Program is worse than corporate welfare. At least most corporate welfare dollars are spent in the United States. The Market Promotion Program, on the other hand, takes precious tax dollars and spends them overseas to pay for advertising of American companies like Sunkist, Gallo Winery, and McDonald's. The self-serving argument goes that scarce tax dollars are being spent to convince people in faraway lands to buy American products. Is it a legitimate role for the Federal Government to act as an ad agency for a multimillion dollar corporation? I think not. The last thing we need to do is for the hard-working taxpayers of America to find themselves footing the bill for the promotion of wealthy companies' products. Let them promote their own products at their own expense. It is time to stop using scarce tax dollars to convince the French to buy Le Big Mac. Let us show the American people instead that we are truly serious about balancing the budget and, by getting the Federal deficit under control, we can get the Federal deficit under control by being responsible and eliminating programs like the market promotion program that are not necessary for the Federal Government to do, that should be left to those big corporations to pay for their own promotional and advertising costs.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, in the next 2 weeks a vital issue will be coming to the floor of the House of Representatives for a vote. We will be deciding whether or not America will continue to have a strong patent system or whether our country will obliterate what has been the strongest patent system in the world. Because the patent legislation is by its very nature a complicated concept, powerful forces have been able to undermine America's patent system with very little public attention. Who is opposed to a strong patent system, someone might ask. Well, how about foreign powers that do not like the United States being the dominant economic and military power in the world? Yes, foreign powers do not like a strong American patent system because they do not want us to have what is America's greatest economic and competitive edge, the genius of our own people being brought to play in the marketplace. Especially countries in Asia which tend to, instead of create new ideas, copy; they instead copy American ideas. These powers in Asia would prefer that America's patent system be weakened. Those are the people who might have an interest in weakening America's patent system, also multinational corporations who have little or no loyalty to the American people. These huge corporate interests who also would like to use the ideas of ordinary Americans and not have to pay royalties to the inventors. These people have an interest in weakening America's patent protection as part of what they view as a global evolution in terms of the marketplace. They want to have a global marketplace, and they see the weakening of America's patent system as part of that. You see, consistent with this idea, the head of America's patent office 3 years ago, his name is Bruce Lehman, went to Japan and agreed to harmonize America's patent law with Japanese law. What they did is agree to make America's patent law, which had been the strongest in the world in the protection of individual rights, they had agreed to totally change our system and make it exactly like the Japanese system. It was a sellout of the interests of the American people. The first step in Lehman's harmonization scheme has already been implemented through this body. As part of the GATT implementation legislation, a provision was included in the GATT implementation legislation that was not required by the GATT treaty itself. They knew when they put this provision in changing our basic patent law that then those of us opposed to weakening our patent system would have to vote against the entire world trading system in order not to vote to change America's patent law. They had their way and they won. However, during my battle against that provision, the House leadership agreed that I would have a chance on the floor of the House to change this provision back because it was not required by GATT. And that is what will be happening in a few weeks from now. H.R. 359, my bill, which is designed to restore the patent, the length of the patent term, the guaranteed patent term that we have had, to Americans that we had for 130 years until this agreement with Japan, will be on the floor as a substitute to another bill. That bill, H.R. 3460, is a bill which is coming to the floor under the guise of patent reform. That bill, my colleagues, is what I call the steal American technologies act. It must be defeated if America is to remain the No. 1 technological power in the world. This bill, I will give you, would complete the process of harmonizing our patent system to be like Japan's. To show how transparent it is, let us take a look at just two provisions of H.R. 3460, the steal American technologies act. First, it would require all Americans who apply for a patent, whether or not they have been issued the patent, after 18 months their entire application, every last detail of their invention, of their idea would be published for the entire world to see and the entire world to steal. Who could defend an idea like that? But that is being presented to us as patent reform, and the people that are behind this are hoping the Members of Congress will not ask about the details. The second provision in H.R. 3460 is a measure to basically destroy the Patent Office, turning it into a private post office-like corporation, stripping our patent examiners of all of their Civil Service protection so they can be influenced by the other side. It is imperative we defeat H.R. 3460. I would ask my colleagues to join me in voting to substitute H.R. 359 for H.R. 3460. Stop the steal American technologies act.