Dana Rohrabacher

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, so I would suggest that the American people read this and take a look at what the impact of these changes that they are proposing will be. They are going to claim it is a patent troll and there is a monitor behind the curtain, but who that person is behind the curtain is the inventor, the person who is coming up with the invention, the Edisons, the Teslas, and the other people who have improved our standard of living. The people who have come up--even this bill would have a serious impact on the development of new medicines and new health care technologies. These people need to be protected in their creation and encouraged, not controlled and not have their rights for ownership of what they created be trimmed. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this legislation, and I realize that I am a lone voice--or almost a lone voice--in this discussion today. I see this legislation as a bipartisan green light to reigniting the cold war. Unfortunately, many of my friends and colleagues, both colleagues today and my friends from the time when I spent in the Reagan White House, 7 years, many of these people feel that the cold war is not over, that it never did end. They are more comfortable with treating Russia as if it were still under Communist rule. Well, Putin is not a Communist leader. Putin is a nationalist who loves his country and he is looking out for the national interests of his country. For us to try to demonize him and to try to suggest that he is doing this as he did in the cold war and he is still KGB, et cetera, is not doing the cause of peace any good. This is what started this whole slide in the wrong direction toward the type of confrontation we are having today. In Ukraine, a democratically elected President was removed from power, and that was a democratically elected President who is more inclined towards better relations with Russia. He was removed from power. And then the Russian Government, under Mr. Putin, decided to ensure the people of Crimea the right to self-determination. Because even Secretary of State Kerry has verified and testified before our committee that the people of Crimea obviously want to be part of Russia, this is not a power grab. This is defending their right to self determination, and certainly the people of Crimea have the right to make that determination just as the people of Kosovo had their right to leave Serbia behind. Our military action there to try to protect the right of self determination of the Kosovars, it cost many, many lives. This Russian military move, with all this power grab, et cetera, has resulted in the loss of one life. That is in stark contrast to when we bombed Belgrade, we bombed Serbia. No, we should not permit ourselves to reignite a cold war. We should make sure that we realize that the actions we are taking here suggesting the United States must rush in and be the arbiter in every one of these type of conflicts is always stretching our budget. But in this particular bill, we are going to put our name on a loan of $800 billion to a country that we are going have to borrow the money from China to get. The United States can no longer afford to right every wrong in the world and be the arbiter. In this case we would be arbitrating in the wrong direction.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, for 2 months, public attention has been riveted on Ukraine. Today, I suggest it is harmful to our security to just focus on Ukraine and ignore the battle against radical Islam and the ensuing threat of China that is far more dangerous to us than which direction Crimea goes. Yesterday, Secretary of State John Kerry requested that Congress approve aid to Pakistan. That is foreign aid to Pakistan. The administration is requesting $881.8 million for aid to Pakistan. The Congress and the American people should pay attention to this request. Since 9/11, the United States has given Pakistan over $25 billion, with over $17 billion of that going to the Pakistani security services, services that target and kill American soldiers through helping those elements in that part of the world that kill American soldiers and terrorize civilian populations. Our generosity has only emboldened Pakistan's military clique--that clique that actually rules the country, that clique that gave refuge to Osama bin Laden. Most importantly, Pakistan has not been acting as our friend--not just that clique, but the government itself of Pakistan; and we don't need to be supplementing the countries and supporting the countries and giving aid to the countries that are hostile to America's interests and hateful of our way of life. It is a charade to believe that our aid is buying Pakistan's cooperation in hunting down terrorists, as Secretary Kerry stated yesterday. Frankly, that is wishful thinking, but that is not facing the reality of what we confront in South Asia. A Pakistani commission reported on the bin Laden raid--the raid that brought bin Laden, the murderer of so many Americans, to justice--and the Pakistani commission points out negative developments in U.S.- Pakistan relations in recent years, and it is, in their view, ``a growing American threat'' to Pakistani interests. These are not the sentiments of a regime that wants to work with us. These are not the sentiments of friends. Remember, when our SEAL teams went to get Osama bin Laden, the Pakistani Government took the wreckage of one of our helicopters--a stealth helicopter, cutting-edge technology that was used in that raid--and gave it to the Communist Chinese. Of course, the Pakistanis call the Chinese their all-weather friend, and we are supposedly just their fair-weather friend; yet we should be giving, according to this administration, over $881 million more in aid, on top of the billions that we have already given the Pakistanis. Indeed, a study by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project found that 81 percent of those surveyed in Pakistan were favorable to Communist China--Communist China--which represses its own Muslim population, murders Christians, and is a dictatorship of a clique--of a crony capitalist clique that controls that country. When 81 percent of those surveyed in Pakistan are favorable to that country, while only 11 percent are favorable to the United States, should we be spending money that we are borrowing from China, in order to give money to a country that likes China more than it likes the United States, and we end up giving money to the country and to the people that don't like us? Well, no. We should cut off our aid to Pakistan because it is not an ally, and any money we send to them only strengthens their ability to act against us and against our friends in Afghanistan and elsewhere. We cannot buy the friendship of the people of Pakistan, nor can we buy the friendship of the Government of Pakistan. These are people who feel that their core interests and their values go totally against what we believe in and who we are, as a country. At a time of tight budgets, we should reserve our aid for friends and allies. We should never give assistance to those who target and kill Americans or even support those elements that do target and kill Americans. Perhaps we could reexamine our motives and our ability to provide such assistance throughout the world. Obviously, we can't be supporting our enemies like this; but even with our friends in friendly countries, we are having to borrow money from China and elsewhere, in order to give money, as aid, to other countries. That makes no sense to me. We need to restructure our aid situation. Yes, America does have a moral obligation to try to help others in need, but perhaps we should focus on emergency situations and limit our aid to those countries who have tsunamis or earthquakes or other catastrophes in which much of their population is in grave danger or is suffering. That type of foreign aid is something we can be proud of, and we can channel it to any group of people in the world who are ordinary people who are in danger. We can then reach out and show our generosity, and perhaps we will receive some gratitude from people who are in a desperate situation rather than transferring our money to governments that are often anti, against, everything America stands for. How do we know that Pakistan still has a government that considers-- at least a clique that runs their government and that tells their government--that considers the United States less than a friend, perhaps an enemy? It is very easy to see. We should never forget. And the real bellwether for this is the treatment of Dr. Afridi. As we ponder our policies, let us not forget Dr. Afridi, the heroic Pakistani doctor who was instrumental in the effort to capture or kill bin Laden. Dr. Afridi was arrested on May 22, 2011, 3 weeks after the United States raid which brought Osama bin Laden to justice. He has been in a Pakistani jail ever since. He was initially held beneath the ISI's headquarters in Islamabad. There he was tortured and kept blindfolded for 8 months and handcuffed for a year, leaving physical damage on this heroic friend of America. This man is a hero who risked his life to bring to justice the terrorist monster who organized the 9/11 attack that killed 3,000 Americans. Dr. Afridi risked his life to bring justice, and we leave him in Pakistan in a dungeon. We abandon him. We leave him to rot in that dungeon. In May 2012, Dr. Afridi was moved to the Peshawar Central Jail after being sentenced to 33 years in jail. Dr. Afridi told FOX News he helped the CIA out of love for the United States and swore that he would help America again despite the fact that these people were torturing him. We have not only abandoned him, but Congress is considering, as I say, giving even more, hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, the total amount of aid that they want to give to Pakistan this year is $1.3 billion in American aid to Pakistan. This is an abomination. It is shameful. It is cowardly. It is a cowardly betrayal of a man who risked his life for us. Who else, who will stand with us in the future if we treat our friends this way? America all so often treats our friends in a shabby way, abandons them at a time, and then our government has the gall to request that we give aid to those people who are the tormentors of Dr. Afridi. In fact, these are the men who we know this government in Pakistan is run by and controlled by a clique of people who hid Osama bin Laden, gave refuge to the murderer of 3,000 Americans for years, and then, of course, they claim they didn't know he was there--there--right next to the school where they train all of their military officers. Pakistan is supporting America's enemies who are attacking American soldiers in Afghanistan and have targeted and, of course, brutally murdered other Americans and brutally murdered other people throughout that region who are hostile to their radical Islamic terrorist agenda. Secretary Kerry says that we must give support to placate the positive elements in Pakistan. It sort of reminds me of when somebody was saying back before World War II, we better try to get with Hitler because there are some really bad guys in the Nazi Party, even worse than Hitler. Give me a break. Hitler was an evil man, and the people in Pakistan, the clique that runs that country and engages in terrorism is an evil clique, and we should not be providing them the resources they need to build their military capabilities. Well, Pakistan's fight against militancy is, of course, against our military. It is very evident because what we have got is attacks being conducted by what? By people who are stationed, whose operations they are operating out of areas in Pakistan. And that has been going on for years. Well, trying to give them money, from the United States to the Pakistani Government, is not buying us friendship, and it is not buying future or even current peace. By the way, the money that we give them that isn't being used to attack Americans and friends of ours is being used to butcher their own people and suppress the opposition within Pakistan to this brutal regime. They are terrorizing; the Pakistani Government is terrorizing whole populations of their country like the Balochis and the Sindhis. The Balochis and the Sindhis are people that would prefer not to be under the heel of a Pakistani Government run in Islamabad. The Baloch people live in an area of South Asia now claimed by Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. But in Pakistan in particular, they comprise an important segment of the population, and they live in the least developed province. Unfortunately, it may be the least developed province, and it is where the poorest of all Pakistanis reside. All of that, if you take a look at being the poorest and least developed, but you also look at one other factor, it is the richest in natural resources of all the provinces of Pakistan. So what we have is a looting of Balochistan by that clique that runs the Pakistani Government in a way that does not, of course, benefit the people of Balochistan. Until the arrival of the British Empire, the Baloch people had organized themselves into sort of a confederation of tribal chiefs. That is where the power was, very similar to Afghanistan's tribal and village system. And these people, the Balochi, who recognize themselves as a national entity, they would like to control their own destiny again. But the Balochi people have been terrorized and beaten into submission by the Pakistani military. We provide the Pakistani military with the weapons and the resources they need to conduct their terrorism not only against their neighbors, not only against Christians throughout the world, but against their own people. The Pakistani military has been unrelenting in its attacks and targeted terror raids against the Baloch population. Baloch aspirations for independence have been checked by force and by denying basic human rights and the unleashed brute force against them by a basically state terrorist repression of their people by their own government. One particularly grotesque method of intimidation of the Baloch is called ``kill and dump.'' That is when the body of a man or woman who has disappeared from a village is later dumped in the middle of that village. And who do you think is doing this? We are talking about the Pakistani military authorities who are conducting this type of terrorism on their own people, even, as we have said, the same people who gave safe haven to bin Laden who had massacred 3,000 Americans, the same people who offered their territory as a staging area to launch attacks into Afghanistan supporting the Taliban. This abysmal human rights record is the record of the Pakistani Government, and it is shameful. It is shameful that we are even considering giving a government like this more American aid, and we are even going to have to borrow that aid from China to give it to them. It is even worse, of course, because American foreign and military aid contributes to the security forces which, of course, are killing the Baloch. We are not just giving foreign aid; we are giving military aid as well. The Baloch people have a right to self-determination and not to live under the control of Islamabad if that is what they choose. At the very least, no military aid should be given to Pakistan to be used against its own people, whether they be Baloch or Sindhi or any other minority. I have already proposed legislation, H.R. 1790, to end all aid to Pakistan, and have also offered amendments to both the Defense and State Department authorization bills to end this aid, but what needs to be seriously discussed is not just ending aid. We need to seriously discuss a fundamental shift in America's policy towards South Asia, a strategy. We have had the same strategy since the cold war, but those policies that we established during the cold war no longer make sense. In the 1960s, China fought battles in both India and the Soviet Union. The India-Soviet alignment at that point alienated the United States during the cold war, and what resulted was clearly an adversarial relationship with India. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the U.S. and Pakistan worked together to support the Afghan insurgents who were then battling against Soviet occupation troops. Yes, during the cold war, Pakistan was an ally, but the cold war is over. And even then when we fought with them, when they helped us support the mujahideen fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, they channeled our money, they channeled the lion's share of our support to radical Islamist terrorists who should never have had any support from the United States. Much of it went to a fellow named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. This man is horrendous. He has a horrendous record. Even then they knew that, when this man was in college, he would throw acid into the faces of young women who refused to wear burkas. And we were giving our aid to Pakistan who gave it to a man like that? Well, the cold war is over, and there is no reason for us to give them aid that they can pass on to terrorists any more. Yes, the cold war is over, and since the Soviet Union's collapse in the early 1990s, basic elements of American security have fundamentally changed. The Pakistani-China friendship since that time has deepened. And who is our adversary today? It is no longer--Russia gets in the news, but who is really our threat? Radical Islam and an emerging China that is much more aggressive than the Russians could conceive of being. It is ever more intense and is now clearer that an alliance with India against Pakistan is in the interest of the United States because Pakistan is clearly moving in the direction of becoming a self-declared enemy of the United States even as we give them military and other types of aid. Pakistan's gut hostility towards India and its shaping of its now ever-increasing alliance with China puts them not only as an enemy to India, but as an adversary at the very least, an adversary to the United States. Pakistan is in partnership with terrorist groups like the Taliban, and that is very clear to people who are active in that part of the world. We should not be treating this enemy as a friend. In fact, we should reach out to India and try to reestablish, just to establish-- perhaps not reestablish, but to establish a positive relationship that will lead to a stronger stance for peace and stability in that part of the world as we offset the terrorist support that is coming from Pakistan. We should not be treating an enemy country like Pakistan as a friend. It will not make them our friend. It will, instead, make them disdain us. They will disdain our giving people money who are our enemies. They will look at it as we are cowardly; and it is an example of such cowardice. We are giving billions to a military and a government that is controlled by a military clique that despises us and is cooperating with those who would destroy us. Not one cent to Pakistan. The money going to Pakistan is going contrary to our interests, to our security, and to the stability of South Asia. Let us double our efforts to work with India and other countries in South and Central Asia that truly desire to be America's friends. And nowhere, of course, is our hesitancy to do that, to reach out and to try to support our friends, nowhere is that hesitancy more evident than now and what we are doing with Egypt. I would call the attention of the American people to what is going on in Egypt. In terms of the long run, it is far more important to American security and the stability of the world and world peace what is going on in Egypt right now than what is happening in the Crimea right now. The Egyptian army is the most potent force standing between radical Islam and its objective to terrorize and subjugate whole populations throughout the Middle East and thus put themselves into a position of facing down and defeating Western civilization. We are talking about radical Islamists who believe in what they believe in. Just as in the cold war, the communists believed in that gobbledygook. But the fact is, radical Islam sees that, and they see Western civilization as the enemy, and the United States as the foundation of Western civilization, and they see any government that is trying to be democratic as their adversary and enemy. It is clear the Egyptian people understood that when they rejected the radical overtures of the former regime that was in power in Egypt. They rose up against that government, the Morsi government, and right now whether or not Egypt is a sucked into a turmoil and whether radical Islam takes over that country, it is now in the hands of a very few leaders of that country who are we shunning. It is clear that our reluctance to back the stance of Egypt is emboldening the radical Islamic terrorist elements who now will target Egypt because we are hesitant to get behind General al-Sisi and the Egyptian military, who, by the way, are committed to bringing back democratic elections and having democratic elections and a democratic process as compared to the regime that they will be replacing, which was dedicated to establishing an Islamic caliphate and was in the process of trimming back the democratic capabilities of the Egyptian people. How ironic is it that if Egypt falls, there will be chaos and radical Islamic expansionism in that part of world, and how important it is for us not to have that for world stability and our own national security. How ironic is it that we are holding back, but Russia, under Mr. Putin, just last month provided, maybe 2 months ago, went over to Egypt and provided $2 billion worth of military aid to help them defeat radical Islam. Russia's proposed arms deal with Egypt and its endorsement of Egypt's military ruler, General al-Sisi, and his efforts to run for President is a signal to the Arab leaders that, unlike the United States, Russia will back those courageous enough to take on the radical Islamic threat to human freedom and human progress. The Egyptian people were saved from Islamic extremist rule. They were saved by a small group of people who we are putting roadblocks in the way of General al-Sisi. We actually convinced the Egyptian military to be dependent on the United States over the years, and now, when they are in a crisis, we are refraining from selling them the helicopters and the spare parts they need to thwart the radical Islamic terrorists who threaten a battle in the Sinai desert. If we let the Egyptian military down and we send that signal, we abandon them, as we have abandoned Dr. Alfridi. No one in the world will ever trust us again. There will be a major expansion of radical Islamic terrorist regimes, and the world we know will be far less stable and far less secure. Our country, and other democratic countries in the world, will be in dramatic danger. The Egyptian people were saved from Islamic extremist rule by a very courageous group of people. We can't let them hang out on a branch by themselves. And yes, the United States and the rest of the world were saved by the actions of a small group of people who stood up as Morsi and the former government was cutting away the freedom of those people and establishing this radical Islamic caliphate. Well, a small group of courageous people stood up to side with the people who had gone into the streets to oppose that and said, No, we are not going to let this government superimpose this type of regime. It is contrary to the will of the Egyptian people. And they have, I might add, put Egypt back on a course towards free elections. Egypt, of course, is one of the most strategic countries. Yet, as I say, we don't hear our administration, this administration, coming here to plead the case about giving aid to those brave people in Egypt who are fighting radical Islamic terrorism. Instead, they are requesting hundred of millions of dollars, yes, over a billion dollars in aid to Pakistan, which is aiding radical Islamic terrorists and siding with China. Well, if you think that none of this makes sense, you are right, it doesn't, but it is up to us, the American people, to hold our own government accountable, to make sure that we do not give aid to our enemies and to make sure that our government is doing things that make sense. We should be sticking with our friends and opposing our enemies. How much more common sense does it take, although our government has not been operating that way. It is up to us, the American people, to make sure that we do not give aid to Pakistan and we support those people who would have Western democratic government in Egypt, and to support the people like the Baloch and the Sindhis, who are struggling under the oppression of radical Islamic terrorist regimes, to try to find their own way and have their own government and have their own democratic system With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment and in strong support of H.R. 3964. Final passage of this bill, as we come to the floor, is a defining vote. It is a vote by which the public will be able to determine just whose side we are on. Do we favor animals--even fish--above the well- being of people? A clique of environmental extremists with lots of money and no common sense have fostered insane policies that are destroying one of the most vibrant and productive industries in California. These antihuman, pro- animal policies have resulted in the unemployment of tens of thousands of hardworking Americans who are struggling to make ends meet. Their lives and livelihood have been destroyed, all for the purpose of protecting a minnow that isn't even good enough to be baked. Yes, by this vote, the public will be able to determine whether or not, at a time of drought and crushingly high unemployment, we will continue to dump hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of fresh water into the San Francisco Bay every year--enough water to grow 10 million tons of tomatoes, 200 million boxes of lettuce, or 20 million tons of grapes. This is government regulation gone berserk. Instead of protecting us from environmental threats, people are being treated as expendable. The current policy is destructive not only to our farmers, who are probably affected the most, but it is increasing the cost of putting food on our families' tables. All of this is being done for what? To protect the well-being of a fish. Now we have an opportunity to reestablish our priorities. A vote against this bill is a vote for radical environmentalists' antihuman policies. A vote for this bill is a vote to reaffirm that we place a higher value on human beings and want to improve their condition. Join me in opposing this amendment and supporting the bill.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Chairman, we have certainly heard a lot about trolls, haven't we? Maybe we should understand exactly how that word came to be used in this debate. Top executives from one of the huge electronics mega-companies, these international corporations, were sitting around one day. One of them happened to tell me about the conversation they had, which is, How do we demonize the small inventor who is coming at us because we are infringing on his patents? How do we do that? We can't attack the small inventor because people know that is where the progress of the United States comes from, is our independent inventors. We can villainize the lawyers who represent those small inventors. They went around the room, and this executive tells me about this conversation: Well, what should we call them? What is a sinister, evil sound that can get away from the fact that we don't have our own arguments and our arguments against this don't stand up; that we are really attacking the little guy's ability to prevent us from stealing his patent? What word can we use that can get people so they won't see that? Let's call them ``trolls.'' Well, the guy who was talking to me, who was in the conversation, he was an executive from one of these multi-national corporations, he said, Well, I suggested patent pirates, but trolls sounded so much more sinister. That is what we hear today. Every time you hear the word ``troll,'' what you are hearing is a manipulation of this debate by some very special interest, powerful interest, who wants to steal from the independent inventor. Everything in this bill that we are talking about trolls actually impacts on America's independent inventors in a dramatic way. This is the greatest attack, the biggest attack, on the independent inventor in the 25 years that I have been a Member of Congress. The fact is, these big multi-national corporations are infringers. Every one of the big corporations behind this bill that is trying to have us ram this through the Congress has been found guilty of multiple infringements against small inventors. So they are going to get us--oh, no. We are going to pass rules in the name of stopping the trolls, which are really going to undercut the small inventor in this country. This is a disaster. This is the anti-innovation bill. This is the let's kowtow to these multi-national electronic corporations like Google, that have poured lots of campaign donations into this issue on Capitol Hill in the last few years. No, let's watch out for the little guy. What we have are the Philo Farnsworths or the Edisons, the people who actually came up with the changes that have made America secure, made us prosperous, made our people competitive with cheap labor overseas because we have got the technology. Let's make sure that we don't smash this generation's Edisons and Philo Farnsworths. I oppose this bill.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. So we keep hearing that this is about trolls. And we just heard about a problem that is being described, and it is a big problem, where you have got people coming into a retailer and suggesting that they were going to sue them for using a piece of technology that the retailer is not really fully aware of. Okay, how is taking away the rights of every American inventor through judicial review of what the Patent Office has done to accept or reject his patent, how does that affect the trolls? It affects the so-called trolls not at all. But I tell you what it does, it means that we have taken away a right of every inventor.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. What we are doing is taking away the right of every independent inventor, a right that he has had since 1836, to say that if a government official in the Patent Office is doing something illegal to deny him his patent, this small inventor has a right, has a right to go to the judges and get a court action on it. What does that have to do with trolls? That is in this bill. We are taking away the rights of little guys, small inventors, in the name of getting the trolls, and we are making it impossible for small inventors to go after the big infringers, these multinational corporations which tell these guys, Screw off; you can't challenge us in the courts anyway.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Chair, let us remember, as we go through this debate, that it is the contention of those who oppose this legislation that this legislation has a more dramatic negative impact on the independent inventor who is seeking justice from the multinational corporations who infringe a great deal upon these little guys, and we are cutting off the little guys' ability to protect their patent by making it much more difficult, number one, to have a patent. How does that stop the trolls, by making it more difficult to have a patent? And it makes it more difficult to defend a patent, as we are seeing in this amendment. And how does that necessarily deal with the trolls? So we now have put a huge burden that small, independent inventors don't have now when they are fighting Goliath. They are fighting these big corporations that routinely infringe and steal from the little guy; and as I have said openly in the beginning, this is the strategy set down by these big corporate interests to make trolls the issue and not patent rights the issue. In this particular amendment, what we have added is a further burden on the part of the small inventor to protect his patent in the name of getting the trolls. We have notification required and confirmation of exactly who owns it. What we have got here now in the current law, yes, small inventors can seek investors, can seek people to join them to help them take on the big guys. Now, all of those people who are trying to help the little guy are going to have to be public knowledge. That would have destroyed so many of the small inventors who have done so many great things for America because they know these corporate people who are infringing on the little guy, they seek vengeance on people who oppose their power grab on these little guys. We don't need that. We need to know whether or not it is a valid patent claim. That is what we need to know--does someone have a valid patent claim. And if they do, let's not demonize these people who are helping the small inventor. Let's find out if this is a legitimate claim or not. Unfortunately, this legislation and this amendment have nothing to do with whether or not we are determining a legitimate claim has been made or not made in a particular case, especially what we are talking about here. We do need to make sure these suits are not being filed. But what does that have to do with making sure that every small inventor in this country has to disclose all of the people who have invested in this company, et cetera? Again, we have an example where the little guy is going to be emasculated by this law and what is being proposed. And the big guys: of course, this doesn't hurt them at all. And, again, if the public is having trouble understanding that, let's figure out how does taking away the constitutional right of the small inventor to having a judicial review--a constitutional right that he has had since 1830--how does taking that away help in some way get controls under control? How does that do that? This is a front. It is just like those businessmen that had that meeting that I described knew exactly what they were doing. They were creating a demon over here, the troll, in order to what? In order to gain changes in the system that will help these mega-corporations defeat the small inventor who is trying to sue them on infringement. That is what is behind this. For 25 years, I have been sitting here in Congress fighting the battle with these same multinational corporations. This is just the most recent step towards this power grab in destroying the strong patent system that America has had--the patent system that protects the little guy--as compared to the patent systems in Europe and Japan, where the little guys are smothered and routinely have their patents stolen from them. Let's be real here. Okay, we can talk patent troll, patent troll, patent troll; and then they put in place changes like this that dramatically damage small inventors and their rights to protect themselves against infringement. I oppose the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of my amendment.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of my own amendment, which would remove section 9(a) from the Innovation Act. My amendment would protect the American inventors from an incredible attack on their constitutional rights by eliminating from this bill the bill's elimination of the right for judicial review of the American inventors who feel that perhaps they were not treated legally by their applications to the patent system. They have had a right since 1836 to a judicial review. This is a constitutional right that has been for a long time recognized. This bill eliminates that. Of course, we are out to get the troll. Everything is going to be aimed at getting the troll. How does eliminating the constitutional right of an independent inventor who doesn't have a lot of money but now he feels maybe he has been mistreated or maybe not legally treated by the patent office, up until now he has had the right, as every other American citizen, to their day in court; and instead, we are taking the little guy and eliminating his day in court if he feels that he has a legitimate legal claim that he was not treated legally through the patent system? Why are we attacking the little guy? Well, we have to get to the trolls. We have got to make it much more difficult for a little guy to get a patent. We have got to make it much more difficult for a little guy to defend a patent against these mega-multinational corporations that routinely infringe on the small guy. Now, we know we have heard about the wrongdoing of a certain percentage of inventors or people who own patents in this country. Let's get a patent. But this bill totally undermines and attacks the rights of people who are handling themselves correctly. It makes it more difficult for the independent inventor. Here we are taking away his constitutional rights. By the way, let me just note I have heard Mr. Goodlatte say that this in some way eliminates the regular process of the Patent Office. That is not the case, Mr. Goodlatte. The Patent Office procedures are kept the same in this bill as they have been. The only thing that this bill changes, or that your bill seeks to change that my amendment would eliminate, is eliminating the right of these independent inventors to go to court and say they made an unconstitutionally legal decision on my patent. I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren).

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers).

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I yield myself 30 seconds. Well, the Supreme Court disagrees with what the chairman of our Judiciary Committee says. The Supreme Court has decided against the very argument that he gave. And the fact is, if someone in this country, an inventor, an independent inventor or anybody else thinks they have a claim that a government agency has not treated them in a constitutional and lawful manner, they have a right to take that before a court. This bill eliminates that constitutional right that our inventors have had since the 1830s. I am sorry, this again discloses the power grab behind this bill. I ask support for my amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, we keep hearing about the trolls; and, yes, there is some problem with the trolls, and sometimes it hurts middle class people. But we can solve that problem without destroying the rights of our American independent inventors, and they are pleading with us, interest groups around the country are pleading with us not to go so fast. I support the Conyers substitute, but I rise in opposition to this bill. Among those opposing or having expressed serious concern about this Innovation Act are the Association of American Universities, American Council on Education, Association of American Medical Colleges, Eagle Forum, Club for Growth, the American Bar Association, the Patent Office Professional Association, the American Intellectual Property Association, the National Association for Patent Practitioners, the Judicial Conference committee on rules and practices and procedures. Our judges are absolutely opposed to this, and yet we have this idea that we will just take away the rights of the little guy to have his day in court, that it doesn't make any difference. That is not what our judges say. Mr. Chairman, I submit this list to be placed in the Record. Please, let's not rush into a move that will destroy our independent inventors and our innovators in America. Don't Blow Up the Bridge to Innovation To Kill the ``Patent Troll'' Oppose HR 3309, the Innovation Act, which will have numerous unintended consequences. Some of the groups opposing, or concerned with, the Innovation Act: Association of American Universities; American Council on Education; Association of American Medical Colleges; Association of Public and Land-grant Universities; Association of University Technology Managers; California Healthcare Institute; Council on Government Relations; Eagle Forum; Club for Growth; American Bar Association (ABA); Patent Office Professional Association; Judicial Conference, Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure; American Intellectual Property Association (AIPLA); Intellectual Property Owners Association IPO); National Association of Patent Practitioners (NAPP); University of California; National Venture Capital Association; Innovation Alliance; Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Some concerns with the Innovation Act: creates more paperwork when an inventor files an infringement claim, increasing the costs to defend their rights; forces a patent holder who files a claim of infringement to maintain a new bureaucratic reporting requirement; and to pay new recordkeeping fees; eliminates the independent judicial review of patent applicants by striking Section 145 of Title 35. This is very important in order to keep the patent office honest. Striking this provision will leave the inventor with no independent recourse outside of the patent office. Dramatically increases the potential financial risks for filing an infringement lawsuit.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise reluctantly to favor the rule because it makes an extremely important amendment, my own and several others, it approves them to come on the floor; but I oppose final passage because even with those amendments, they do not do enough to make this bill worth supporting. One of the most important amendments is my amendment, as I stated, which would strike the section of this legislation which eliminates for the small inventor, for the independent inventor, the right of judicial review if his case is being mishandled by the patent system. And let me just note that if, indeed, this was to protect, if we were going to protect the little guy, if that was the purpose of this bill, there wouldn't be a question here. But here we are eliminating the little guy's right to even go to court if he is being mistreated by the patent system. Also, an amendment not made in order was Marcy Kaptur's amendment which would have, again, protected the little guy. We are being told this protects the little guy; yet they won't allow Marcy Kaptur's amendment, which is aimed at protecting the little guy, from even coming to a vote.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. We hear over and over again that this is about patent trolls and hinting that there are illegitimate patents that we are talking about. We are talking about legitimate patents; and the patent troll, let us just note, who is he going against supposedly, it is multinational mega--mega--corporations that routinely infringe on the little guy. Yet Marcy Kaptur, while trying to protect the rights of the little guy against these giant corporations--like Google--instead, we have not permitted her amendment to come forward. This is the greatest attack, this bill, on the small inventor that I have ever seen in 25 years. I ask support for the rule, but oppose the bill itself.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, let me thank my good friend, Mr. Gohmert, for that heartfelt expression. Yeah, there are problems at whatever area of government we look at. There are ways that we can improve it, but there are also problems in government that can be used as an excuse, as a cover for a power grab by very special interest groups in our country to change the law in the name of dealing with a serious problem. Then what comes out of it has something to do with the interest of that special interest, rather than curing the problem. That is what is going on today when we deal, when we hear all of this talk about the patent system. We must all ask ourselves: Do we want to be known as the Congress that killed the U.S. patent system which has served the American people well for 225 years? Let's note that there are very powerful interests in this country. Mr. Gohmert and I have been fighting them on a number of fronts. We call them globalists because what they are interested in is making sure that our economy and our rules and our rights are based in a global system that eventually will be run by the United Nations or whoever. We have got multinational corporations trying to break down things like the patent law that have been unique to the United States and granted the American people many more rights than are granted to the people of other countries. So, once again, we are talking about reforming the patent system. After 20 years of fighting on these issues, again, we have a salami approach by people, a lot of people who don't even believe in the patent system, who are trying to change the fundamentals of our system. Well, just last year we passed the American Inventors Act, and it just went into effect earlier this year. Now we have patent lawyers, the courts, and inventors trying to figure out the implications of the changes of that last law from last year, and that was one of the most sweeping changes to the present American patent system that we ever had. Why are we rushing into it now before we even know what the results are from the patent bill that was passed last year? Well, even before we are able to judge the America Invents Act, this other patent bill is now being rammed through this House. Let me repeat that. It is being rammed through at breakneck speed, not giving the people on the outside--there are powerful interest groups that are pushing for these changes, because it will permit them, basically it will permit the big guys to steal from the little guys. Yeah, okay. These big, multinational electronics companies want to steal from America's independent inventors. They are ramming their changes in the patent system through this House at breakneck speed so that people on the outside are not going to be able to notice what is going on and how it will impact them. Well, the word is getting out. It is spreading out throughout America, whether it is our universities, or whether it is people in biotech or the pharmaceutical industries or the American Bar Association or small inventors throughout the country, people are beginning to notice the danger that we are in by this rapid movement of legislation through the system. I wish I could simply focus on the bad provisions of this new bill, as I say, the Innovation Act, H.R. 3309, I call it the Anti-Innovation Act. That bill is expected to be on the floor in the next couple of days. If the bill is bad, okay, the process now being used to get that bill through the system is--they are stifling debate. They are having such limited time that people aren't able to really go in and see what is involved in this bill. Remember the last time when we actually looked at, we tried to pass a significant piece of legislation before people had really had a chance to examine it and look at it? Well, having this bill rammed down our throats at such breakneck speed is even worse than the bill itself. In the one Judiciary Committee hearing--they only had one on this particular bill--witness after witness strongly recommended moving slowly, and warned of unintended consequences. While it takes a few minutes to consider each provision of this bill, it takes only a few minutes to see that they are aimed--give them the benefit of the doubt that they are single, that there is a single thorn in the side of the mega-electronics companies that are behind this bill, and that is that you have small inventors who will come up and say you have violated my patent, long after they have just ignored the patent and went and used it anyway without the inventor's permission. Well, that one thorn in the side of these mega-electronic companies, to get rid of that, they are willing to create much more pain in other industries, in our educational institutions, in researchers, especially pain for America's individual, yes, independent inventors. In the rush to get H.R. 3309 on to the floor so quickly, there has not been a single full day, legislative day, that is, between the time this legislation passed the Judiciary Committee, which means that when it passes the Judiciary Committee, that is when it is available to House Members to consider and to submit amendments to the Rules Committee. Well, there has not been one legislative day. This happened right before the vacation, right before we went off for Thanksgiving and, thus, we didn't have time, and everybody is off for Thanksgiving. When are we going to get our amendments put together? We were rushed into our amendments. I came down here 15 minutes ago because I was up in the Rules Committee, finally, where we put together some amendments to try to deal with the dark side of patent law and this patent bill that is going through. So it is, as I say, going to create a lot more, a lot more pain for other industries, because we won't have had a chance to look at it and amend it, than it will do good for the electronics industry. By the way, the electronics industry should be treating the small inventor fairly, and if someone has a legitimate patent and they have ignored it, they should pay that person damages because that person owns what he created. Instead, what we have had is a society where these mega-companies are faced by an inventor and they just say, well, sue us; go sue me and see what you think. What this bill does, of course, is make it much more difficult for the small inventor, the small inventor, to be able to sue because it creates much more, a much heavier burden on the small inventor. So it seems that we have, if we have to pass this bill with such a rapid bill, we are going to have to pass the bill before we realize everything that is in the bill. Well, that shouldn't be happening again, after the last debacle of ObamaCare, which now has turned into a disaster for our country. That is what is going to happen to the patent system, and the confusion that is going to happen when we rush in to passing legislation. I am calling on my friends and colleagues who haven't had time to fully understand the implications of this legislation to join me in demanding a postponement, just a postponement of the vote to pass the bill until after this holiday season is over. That will give us time to consult with our own constituents, with experts, with inventors, and other people from other industries, rather than just these big electronics Google industry gang. So we need to know what the real implications of the legislation are. So we need to what? Postpone the vote. If you can't postpone the vote, kill this bill and start writing a new one and give everybody a chance to have their say, their input into the bill. We are told that this bill is aimed at the threat of so-called patent trolls. You will hear that over and over again. These so-called villainous trolls are patent holders. That is what they are. A patent troll is someone who owns a patent, or a company that represents patent holders. They are engaged in defending their rights against infringement of those patents they own. There are all of these implications that we are talking about invalid patents. No; we are talking about legitimate rights that were granted to the American people to own a patent that is in our Constitution, and these are legitimate patents. But there is this aura, oh, the innuendo that these are abusive patents. What is an abusive patent? It is when somebody like Google is using your patent and refusing to acknowledge that it is yours, and you have got to take them to court, and you are a little guy, and they will do anything to stop the little guys from taking them to court and winning. These patents that we are talking about are just as valid as any other patent that is granted by the Patent Office, and these huge corporations--we are talking about people who have, quite often, intentionally infringed on a patent. What that means is they have intentionally stolen the patent from a little guy who they don't think has the power, financially and otherwise, to enforce his patents through the court. These huge infringers would have us believe that the patents that we are talking about are questionable, they are invalid or unworthy of being patented. Well, that is not the case. That is not what this bill does. What this bill does is make it more difficult for honest and forthright people who are patent owners or independent inventors to enforce their constitutional rights of ownership. The patents that are being targeted by the multinational electronics firms are legitimate, by and large, but they were the projects, these patents were the projects of small inventors who don't have the means to defend themselves. Oh, but what makes these vilified patents different, by the way, than the good patents that are owned by these large corporations themselves? Well, it is the so-called patent troll again. That happens to be a lawyer--and this is defined. A patent troll is a lawyer who takes on a case specifically to defend the little guy from theft. But the lawyer didn't invent it; he is only there for the money. How shocking that we have lawyers who are defending clients only because the lawyer is going to make money on it. That is how our system works. That is what happens. You get lawyers to argue your case before a judge and get a fair hearing. There is nothing wrong with having a lawyer decide that he is going to get involved and help a guy for a percentage of what the case results in and what the decision will be. Being out for profit, even though the person did not invent the technology, is not in any way something that is disgraceful or bad. In fact, these lawyers have become a champion of little guys who don't have the resources to enforce their own patent, or they could be an individual or a company, or they could buy the rights from these small inventors. And let me just say if the inventor is being cheated out of her or his rightful compensation, it is a good thing that there is a lawyer there or anyone else there who wants to invest in that to make sure that that inventor gets just and rightful compensation. Now, I happen to have been very concerned about these changes in the patent law, and I have had meetings over the last couple of months; and I happen to have had a meeting with a very prominent businessman who was in the meeting when the term ``patent troll'' was originated. Surprise, surprise that the term patent troll was thought of by a group of business executives of how they could demonize those people who were suing their companies for infringement on the patent rights. How were they going to do that? They knew they couldn't demonize the independent inventor, the small inventor. Americans think too highly of that. So they decided they would demonize the lawyers and try to divert the attention of the American people away from the issues at hand to try to undermine the ability of the little guy to make his case before the courts and thus demonize the lawyer who was representing him or the lawyer that had helped by taking on the case. So that discussion took place. How cynical can you be. And the person who I was talking to said, And I suggested that we use the term ``patent pirate,'' but that wasn't sinister enough. So every time you hear the term patent troll, remember, it is a way to try to get you to think of a person that they are vilifying rather than the actual issues at hand. And the issues at hand are talking about theft by the big guys of the little guys, of the little guys' patents who can't afford to defend their own constitutional patent rights. Now, I have spoken with independent inventors, conservative political organizations, the American Bar Association, industry groups like PhRMA and biotech. We have major universities today, an organization representing 2,000 universities, that have research projects within those universities, all of whom affirmed that H.R. 3309, the so-called Innovation Act, basically is a bad bill for them. They understand that what we have got is big multinational, again, electronics companies behind us. But it may help those companies. I have no doubt about that. It will help shield them when they infringe on somebody's intellectual property, but it will hurt the rest of these people and the economy. Whether it is other industries or whether it is our educational institutions, I suggest that Members of Congress go back to their districts, give them a chance to go back to their districts, talk to their small inventors. Talk to the small inventors in your districts to see what they think about this poison patent legislation. See what the educators think about it. See about what the universities think. Think about people in major industries that employ hundreds of thousands of people like biotech and pharmaceuticals. Think about those things. Talk to those people, and you will find that there is a very limited number of people who are being helped by this bill, but a tremendous swath across our economy of people who are being hurt by it, not to mention the small independent inventors, the source of our competitiveness, the source that has made America secure, made the American people prosperous because now we can outcompete others because we are technologically superior. No, the patent system has been too valuable for us to let one industry ram that through Congress with a flood of campaign donations that have been going on here for the last several years. Proponents of this legislation, as I say, have demonized the patent lawyers just to draw attention away from the fact that these large companies have stolen someone else's patent-protected technology. So it is the big guys versus the little guys. And guess what, in order to beat the little guys, the big guys are now changing the rules of the game. That will hurt all kinds of people throughout the American economy. H.R. 3309 should be called the Anti-Innovation Act. It is an aggressive attack on the ability of inventors to defend their ownership right to technology that they have invented. This is not about frivolous lawsuits, although you will hear that all the time--frivolous lawsuits and trolls. This is about all lawsuits. This is about all inventors, no matter how absolutely pure their motives are and their rights are clear. No, this will limit each and every independent inventor. This entire bill, every provision diminishes the ability of the small inventor to defend his or her creation. It is a cynical cover for creating for the big guys a license to steal from the little guys. Former Patent Office Director Kappos and other former directors of the Patent Office have made it clear that we should move slowly and with great care in making such changes to the patent law. This legislation is too broad, its implications too unclear, and its effects unknowable. That is what witnesses and experts have indicated. That is what we hear from all around the United States from very significant players in our economy. But that is not what is happening here in Congress. In Congress, this bill is being railroaded into passing; and this is right on top of the passage of last year's legislation, as I say. So what is going on here? This is a heavy-handed attempt by mega- multinational corporations to diminish the viability of America's patent system. This has been going on by these very same multinational corporations to try to diminish patent protection in America. This has been going on for 25 years, and I have seen it over and over again. We have to fight this back. They want to harmonize America's patent system with Japan and Europe, who have weak systems that do not protect the individual inventor. For example, they tried to foist off--we defeated this one--they have been trying to make it so if someone applies for a patent, after 18 months-- this is what they do in Japan and in Europe--after 18 months, the patent application would be published, even though the patent hasn't been granted. I call that the Steal American Technologies Act. The same gang who tried to foist that on us years ago--every year they come up with a new change like that to diminish patent protection for the American people. That would have been the Steal American Technologies Act. Anybody who could have advocated that, it was so blatant that we were able to defeat it outright; and now we face this challenge. According to the sponsors of H.R. 3309, this is, again, an attempt to combat patent trolls, even though there is a study that was mandated in that last bill that shows that Congress--this much heralded problem of patent trolls really isn't a major driver of lawsuits. And what has caused a new surge in lawsuits, interestingly enough, is that new legislation that was passed last year, while most of the provisions of the legislation will make getting involved in lawsuits more complicated, more costly, and more challenging to bring a lawsuit for a patent infringement. What does that mean? That means if the little guy needs to fight for his rights in court, we are making it more complicated, costly, and more challenging for the little guy. Of course the big guys, they have got a whole stable of lawyers working for them. And there you go. These people would restrict lawsuits that are totally legitimate in order to control a very few number of lawsuits that are manipulative of the system and thus are abusive. Rather than making it simpler, cheaper, and easier to defend against baseless accusations and thus reduce spurious lawsuits by strengthening the good guys, this bill is aimed at weakening the small inventors who are the ultimate good guys. In addition, under the claim of ``technical correction,'' this legislation proposes the removal of the patent system's only judicial review process. Listen to this: since 1836, every inventor has known that if they are mistreated by the government officials who run the Patent Office, if the decisions on their patents are made on criteria that is not legally established, they can go to court, and they can challenge that. In fact, as late as last year, the Supreme Court in Kappos v. Hyatt reaffirmed the importance of this judicial review. This bill takes that right away from the individual inventor. The independent inventor who has had this right since 1836 now can't go to the court. He can't have his day in court if he has been treated illegally or wrongly. That is what is in this bill, along with a lot of other things. That is why the American Bar Association is opposed to this bill. I would like to quote my colleague from Texas, Mr. Lamar Smith, former chairman of the Judiciary Committee and primary author of the America Invents Act, which was the last bill. Speaking of the new environmental regulations at the Science Committee just a few weeks ago, he said: Our Founders made sure that the Constitution provides a means for the American people to obtain a fair hearing before impartial judges. This may be one of the most underrated rights Americans enjoy today, the right to judicial review. This proposal is an attempt to prevent judicial review. Americans deserve to understand exactly what this proposal would do and retain the right to challenge it. Let me note that the gentleman from Texas has underscored the importance of having a judicial review of the actions of government employees, especially those in regulatory agencies. This principle applies just as certainly to patent review as it does to environmental regulations that the gentleman was talking about. Now, Patent Office officials have requested that the judicial review be done away with. They want to do away with it, and that is why it is in the bill because they can say it is too burdensome for them to defend what they did as part of their job on the rare occasions when they are challenged in court. But it is just too burdensome for them. Never mind that anyone who brings the claim to court is required to cover the costs. If someone is challenging them, they are going to have to cover their own costs. Well, the Patent Office just wants to strip away that right because Americans don't really deserve to have a day in court to challenge what government officials do because it is just too inconvenient for the bureaucracy. The legislation we expect before the House this week is consistent with a decades-long war raged against America's independent inventors, which I have been talking about, and just this sort of arrogant attitude of the independent inventor is being taken for granted. Let me tell you what the independent inventors have done. They have made our country secure. They have made our country competitive. They have made the American people--our industry is able to pay our people good wages because we are more competitive with high technology and good technology. Technology has helped save our country, and it created the American way of life. This bill would stifle, would kill American technological genius. The provisions of the Innovation Act will impact every inventor in a negative way in America. The Innovation Act will create more paperwork when an inventor files for infringement claim, for example, which means somebody stealing and stuff--this will increase the cost to defend those rights and the potential, of course, if you have much more paperwork, then you give the court the ability to dismiss the case on technical requirements: well, you didn't fill out this technicality; you missed that in the law. So it is making it more costly and much more technically complicated. The Innovation Act will impose rules on the Judicial Conference, meaning on our judges, which run counter to almost 80 years of established rulemaking process, whereby the courts have been establishing their own rules of procedure. Again, this law will dictate how the judges will make their decisions, and it is so definitive that it will complicate the process and could end up with less justice, not more, because the judges will feel compelled not to use their common sense. If we want to get rid of the burden of litigation that is nonsense, you know, frivolous litigation, let's give the judges some more discretion in determining is this really what is meant to be protected by our law instead of having to dictate the very basis for every one of their decisions. The Innovation Act will switch us to a ``loser pays'' system so the potential financial downside for a patent holder, meaning the little guy, increases dramatically. Thus we have a situation where the big guy, again, what does he care if he has to pay the legal fees for a little guy filing against him? But if the little guy loses and then has to pay for the legal fees of the big guy, massive, massive expense which will bankrupt him for life. And the Innovation Act goes even further. It brings other people into that court and into that case. In fact, people who have an interest in that patent, such as investing in the company or licensing the patent, can be brought into that ``loser pays'' court action and thus they would have to then pay the expenses for this huge corporation if that little guy loses. Do you know what that means? Nobody is going to stand up for the little guy. They can't afford to take that risk. These big companies will squash them like bugs because they can absorb that kind of cost. This is the disincentive for people to support the efforts of small inventors whose rights are being denied. Now they will be denied the support of third parties. They can call them trolls if they want. They can say that we are denying them trolls. They are denying somebody else coming in and helping the little guy who can't afford to make sure that these big guys are not stealing his invention and giving him no compensation. The Innovation Act will create a new requirement that patent holders must, once filing a claim for infringement, provide information about all the parties. That means the infringer--these big guys--are going to get a list of all of their enemies. This is not consistent with American tradition where we believe that people don't have to put themselves at risk in order to help a good cause. This means the elimination of privacy in business dealings. The little guy is totally exposed, as his friends and suppliers will be totally exposed as well. The Innovation Act, once this requirement has been invoked, will force the patent holder to maintain a new bureaucratic reporting requirement and a fee that goes with that. Well, what does that mean? That means the little guy now has to keep books that he doesn't have to keep. His life is much more complicated because he has filed an infringement case. These are minor inconveniences to multinational corporations. They have bookkeepers. They have lawyers. This means the little guy is going to be smashed and is going to be smothered under the new requirements of this act. The Innovation Act will enable large multinational corporations to create nested ``shell companies'' as customers, which have few assets but can infringe on patents for a decade or more, while an inventor, of course, cannot. Let me just close, Mr. Speaker, by suggesting that we have the support of a multitude of interest groups in our country--educators, businesses, large corporations, and people in our country--who are opposed to this bill, which I will include in the Record, and I yield back the balance of my time. Who is opposed to H.R. 3309? Universities: Association of American Universities; American Council on Education; Association of American Medical Colleges; Association of Public and Land-grant Universities; Association of University Technology Managers; Council on Government Relations. Patent Experts, Small Inventors, and Legal experts: Former directors of the U.S. patent office; Patent Office Professional Association; American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA); Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO); National Association of Patent Practitioners (NAPP); Judicial Conference, Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure; American Bar Association (ABA). Investors, Professional Organizations, and Business Groups: National Venture Capital Association; Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO); Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA); Innovation Alliance; Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE); U.S. Business & Industry Council; Entrepreneurs for Growth. Other Organizations: Eagle Forum; Club for Growth; American Conservative Union; Campaign for Liberty; The Weyrich Lunch; CapStand Council for Policy and Ethics.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 3547, the Space Launch Liability Indemnification Extension Act. I want to congratulate the chairman and the ranking member for again demonstrating the type of bipartisan support that we have for legitimate science and space projects here in the United States Congress. People say we can't work together. We can keep our eyes on the stars and on the positive things, and we are working together. This piece of legislation proves just that. It wasn't so long ago that there were a lot of people who were skeptical about the commercial space industry, and it is heartening to see that we now have gathered together to make sure that our American entrepreneurs--our space entrepreneurs--are successful and that they do, indeed, launch not only rockets into space but launch a whole new industry, providing great jobs for the American people into space and, thus, benefiting all of us. That is why it is a bipartisan effort that we are talking about today. Space launch liability indemnification is important for the American launch industry, which is, once again, as I said, regaining a global market share to maintain the global market expectations. It is also important to maintain standards that have been long expected of American companies. I fully support a deeper look into this issue, which this legislation provides, because I know that our indemnification structure is not just right for industry--it is right for the American people. It is important to note that indemnification is not a one-way street with the government just protecting industry. The original policy back in 1988 was designed to protect the government as well as industry. When companies buy the insurance required by law, they protect the Federal Government against damages and against damage claims up to the maximum probable loss. I would also note that the requirement for commercial launch providers to purchase insurance and protect the Federal Government against its liability never expires. We should permanently extend the space launch liability indemnification. I look forward to working with the chairmen and ranking members to accomplish just that as we go into next year. I again rise in strong support and thank my colleagues for joining me in this effort to make sure we launch this whole new industry for America.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I would ask my colleagues, do we want to be known as the Congress that killed the U.S. patent system, a patent system which has served the American people well for 225 years? I ask America, America, are you listening? Congress is, once again, talking about reforming the patent system. The last patent reform bill, which passed last year, was the America Invents Act, and it just went into effect earlier this year, and patent lawyers and courts and inventors are still trying to figure out the implications of that change, of the change that that legislation made, and it was the most sweeping change in patent law in the history of our country. Yet, even before we are able to judge the effects of the America Invents Act, a new patent bill is being rammed through this House and through Congress. I wish I could focus simply on the bad provisions of this new bill, the Innovation Act. I like to think of it as the Anti-Innovation Act, H.R. 3309, which is expected to be on the floor later this week. But if the bill is bad, which we are talking about, the process being used to stifle debate and ram this down the congressional throats here on the floor is even worse. In the one Judiciary Committee hearing, witness after witness strongly recommended moving forward slowly, and warned of unintended consequences. It only takes a few minutes to consider each provision of this bill to see that, although it may be aimed at a single thorn in the side of mega-electronic companies, it will create much more pain in other industries, in higher education, and especially to individual inventors. In the rush to get H.R. 3309 onto the floor so quickly, it has not been even one single day between when this bill passed the Judiciary Committee and then, thus, becoming available to Members of the House, once it passes the Judiciary Committee, and there has only not even been one single day of legislative business for Members to consider and submit amendments to the Rules Committee for this important legislation, not one single full day of legislative work, and now this is being rammed down our throats. And of course, the Thanksgiving holiday happened right after they passed it through the committee. The holiday was right in the middle of a very short time line which, of course, virtually guaranteed that all Members, and most of the staff would not be in Washington, D.C., thus, they passed it right before we left town. And this schedule suggests what? It suggests that the fix was in. The clear message to little inventors: give thanks for your intellectual property rights because you may not have them this time next year. Well, this isn't just about rapid, it is also about covert. It seems that we have to pass this bill to find out what is in it. That hasn't worked well for America in the past, and it sure shouldn't be happening again on our watch. I am calling on my friends and my colleagues who haven't had time to fully understand the implications of this legislation, and that means almost everybody in this body, and we are just back today from the holiday break. If you haven't had time to fully understand the implications of this legislation, join me in demanding a postponement of this vote until after the holiday season, which will give us all sufficient time to consult with our constituents, with experts, and to better understand this legislation and the implications it will have for industry, for American progress, for American inventors and innovators. Now, to the content of this legislation. We are told this bill is aimed at the threat of so-called patent trolls. These so-called villainous trolls are patent holders, or they are companies who represent patent holders. They are engaged in defending their rights, given to them by ownership of that patent, against the infringement of their patents by someone else. They own these patents, and these are just as valid as any other patents granted by the Patent Office. But huge corporate infringers would have us believe that these patents are questionable, invalid, unworthy; they are unworthy of being a patent in the first place. Of course, these are the same corporations who have taken these patents and used them without paying the lawful fee that you would pay to someone who invented something that you are using. Well, this is not the case. They are not paying the inventor, and the patents that are being targeted by these multinational electronics firms as claiming that they are illegitimate, well, most of these were just the product of small inventors. And these small inventors, quite often, because they are up against mega, multinational corporations, are without a means to defend their rights if these corporations arrogantly decide to violate those patent rights. And what makes these vilified patents different from the good patents that are owned by these very same large corporations? Well, the so- called patent troll. It happens to be, most of the time, patent trolls are lawyers to take a case on to defend the little guy from theft, but that lawyer didn't invent it. That makes him bad because he is not working for a company, a big mega-company that invents things. No, he is working for a little guy, or he has bought the rights the little man has so that he will get something out of his work. Well, being out for profit from technology, and from technology that someone did not, he or she, invent themselves, now that is really horrible. Doesn't that sound horrible? Well, no it is not. We live in a society where people litigate to protect their rights, and there is nothing wrong. We are being told that the patents in question that are going to be dealt with by this legislation, there is a hint that they are not legitimate patents; they are owned by patent trolls. Well, so much for calculated confusion. If the small inventor doesn't have the resources to enforce his or her patent, an individual or company can buy those rights, just like if they don't have the ability to farm, to plant on a farm, they can sell those rights, or they can create a partnership so that they can actually afford to actually protect themselves from being cheated out of their rightful compensation. I have spoken to independent inventors, conservative political organizations, the American, and all of these people are very suspicious, of course, of these changes that are being put into place in terms of a person's right to litigate to protect their individual rights. Well, those people are also--there are people who are very suspicious of this legislation, the American Bar Association, industry groups. You have got biotech and pharma, these people, and universities throughout our country who are opposed, or at least very concerned about what is going to happen by H.R. 3309, the so-called Innovation Act, which, as I say, should better be called the Anti-Innovation Act. Well, we know that this bill, if passed, will further basically further work against the interest, and it will further the disadvantages that the little guys have against deep-pocketed multinational corporations. And this is achieved in the guise, of course, of attacking patent trolls. See, they have used this word, demonized this word. I happen to have met a person, a man who is a big executive in a major corporation, a major electronics corporation, who was in the meeting with other electronics officials when they coined the phrase, ``patent troll.'' They were doing it specifically to demonize these lawyers, because they knew they couldn't go after the little inventor or the small inventor or the independent inventor. They couldn't go after him and demonize them, even though they were stealing the patent rights from these individuals, so they would go after the lawyer. This person was saying that they went around the room with their ideas: What is the most heinous word we could use to help blind the people about what is really going on? He had suggested ``patent pirate,'' but they had decided on ``patent troll.'' Don't be blinded to the theft that is being justified here by demonizing a group of lawyers who are trying to defend small businessmen, basically small inventors. Proponents of this legislation are demonizing patent lawyers to draw attention away from the fact that they have stolen someone else's patent-protected technology. Now the big guys want to change the system so they can get away with the theft. That is what H.R. 3309 is all about, and that is why it should be called ``the Anti-Innovation Act.'' It is an aggressive attack on the ability of inventors to defend their ownership rights to the technology they have invented. It is not about frivolous lawsuits or trolls. That is a cynical cover that is being used and was created by the big guys as a license to steal from the little guys. Former Patent Office Director Kappos and other former directors of the Patent Office have made it clear that we should move slowly about this type of change and with great care when we are making such major changes in the patent law. This legislation is too broad. The simplifications are unclear. The effect is unknowable. That is what witnesses and other experts have indicated. They conclude, ``Move forward with caution.'' So I ask my colleagues to vote against this bill, but if we can, let's ask our leadership, as I have pleaded with our leadership, to postpone this so we can talk to our educators, talk to the universities, talk to the various employers in our districts, talk to the various people who depend on technology and the technology developed in our country rather than to just go with mega-multinational electronics companies that are guilty of multi-infringement cases as well as antitrust cases. That is not happening. Congress is being railroaded into passing this legislation right on top of the last legislation. Well, what is going on here? As I say, it is a heavyhanded attempt by mega-multinational corporations to diminish the viability of America's patent system. It has been going on this way--and I have seen this for 25 years. Strong patent protection has been one of America's greatest assets. It is written into our Constitution. It is the thing that has given us the ability to have high wages yet be competitive with other societies. It has protected the security of our country and our liberty. That is what strong patent protections have been to us. But according to the sponsors of H.R. 3309, this isn't really something about undermining the patent system, no; it is undermining the trolls. Just by the fact that everything that they are doing has a major impact on the ability of lawful inventors to protect themselves against infringement, and it diminishes the patent protection that we have had traditionally in this country. Every provision. Well, what does it do? For the most part, this legislation will make it much more complicated, costly, and challenging to bring a lawsuit against an infringer. For the little guy, it is going to cost him much more to protect his rights. Well, there you go. These people would like to restrict lawsuits that are totally legitimate to control a few people who have manipulated the system, and thus are abusive lawsuits. Well, we face this all over. There are many lawyers who are engaged in abusive lawsuits which they shouldn't be filing, but they do. Does that mean that we are going to dramatically limit the rights of the American people to litigate when their rights have been violated by someone else, their property has been taken, or they have been abused and they deserve compensation? No. We are not going to limit those rights. But we will limit the rights of the small inventor and let these big megacorporations take what they want from what this person has invented and not give them compensation for it. Rather than making it simpler, cheaper, and easier to defend against baseless accusations of infringement--and there are some baseless--what we have done to reduce spurious lawsuits, all we need to do is strengthen the good guys. But this bill weakens the good guys. It weakens ordinary people who are actually contributing a great deal to our country, the independent inventors. In addition, under the claim of ``technical correction,'' this legislation proposes the removal of the patent system's only independent judicial review process. Section 145 of title 35 in this legislation, if it is enacted, inventors who really believe they have not been treated fairly by the Patent Office--I mean, there may be people in the Patent Office who want to go to work for some major corporation if they decide a certain way, and what they have done, maybe it is not legal. Maybe these things happen in every society, and we need to have a review. In fact, since 1836, American inventors, if they feel the Patent Office has not dealt with them in a legal way, they have the right to seek independent judicial review. By the way, that right was reaffirmed last year by the Supreme Court in Kappos versus Hyatt, which reaffirmed the importance of that review to maintaining the rights of our inventors. Well, this bill would eliminate that right. It just takes it away, something that has been the right of American inventors since 1836. I would like to quote my colleague from Texas, Mr. Lamar Smith, chairman of the Science Committee and former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who is the primary author of the America Invents Act, speaking about new environmental regulations at a Science Committee hearing a few weeks ago: Our Founders recognized that elections alone may not provide adequate protection for the liberties they fought so hard to establish. They made sure that the Constitution provides a means for the American people to obtain a fair hearing before impartial judges. This may be one of the most underrated rights Americans enjoy today--the right to judicial review. This proposal is an attempt to prevent judicial review. Americans deserve to understand exactly what this proposal would do and retain the right to challenge it. In it, Mr. Speaker, he went into how important it is to have judicial review, and that Americans understand how important it is to have not just bureaucrats but a judicial review of what government officials are doing, and how important that is to our freedom. Well, I would say to the gentleman from Texas, Yes, Mr. Smith, I would agree. He is the chairman of my committee, the Science Committee. I am the vice chairman of the Science Committee. We disagree on this bill, but I will say that this is an important part of the bill. H.R. 3309 would eliminate the ability for the court to review what these government officials are doing in their job if they hurt another individual. Mr. Smith thinks that is important when it comes to the environment. I think it is important for the environment and for protecting our inventors. This principle applies just as certainly, as I say, to patent review as it does to environmental regulations. Now the Patent Office officials have requested, of course, that they don't want to have that judicial review. Why is it? Because they say it is too burdensome. Never mind that very few people have such claims. But we are going to eliminate that right and that option because it is inconvenient for our bureaucracy. That is absurd. For that reason alone, this bill should be defeated. The legislation going before the House this week is consistent with a decades-long war being waged on America's independent inventors. Here are a few of the provisions of the bill: It will create more paperwork. When an inventor has to file an infringement claim, it dramatically increases the paperwork necessary for him to file the claim, and, thus, it is not any more expensive, but it increases the possibility that his claim will just be denied out of some technical mistake in the paperwork. The Innovation Act will switch us to a ``loser pays'' system. Now, of course, ``loser pays'' sounds pretty good. That means, if you file a bad suit or something or you lose a suit, the loser is going to pay the legal expenses for the winner. What does that do when you have little guy against big guy, the small inventor versus mega-multibillion dollar international corporation? What it does is say, if a little guy sues the corporation and loses, that is nothing. Paying his legal expenses are absolutely nothing for this big corporation. But if he loses to the corporation, that corporation will have piled on legal expenses that will destroy the economic viability of that small inventor. It is little guy versus big guy. In this case, making the loser pay is a big advantage to the big guy at the expense of the little guy. What is unfortunate, this bill goes even further than that. This bill will allow the court to bring others into the case as plaintiffs if they have an interest in the patent. So if someone is invested in the person's patent--in the little guy's patent--they have invested in it, and they lose a lawsuit trying to enforce their rights to have compensation for the use of what they have invented, if they lose that suit, the person who is invested with the little guy, he is going to be liable for this massive bill that these big companies are bound to pile on. So this ``loser pays'' system has some attraction but, in reality, will be a disaster for the little guy trying to enforce his rights. We have also in this bill that it would create new requirements that the patent holder, once filing a claim for infringement, must provide information about all parties who have an interest in the patent. Thus, what we have is a list that even the infringer will have. So this man, a small businessman, an inventor, will then have all of his business dealings then basically be made public, and his enemies will have that list to go after. This would have destroyed Thomas Edison. This would have destroyed our great inventors of the past. There are people who don't want to put themselves in public view in order to get behind new inventions. This means the total elimination of privacy in dealing with businesses. Of course, we have another requirement in here that basically is a reporting requirements for the little guy. We have bureaucratic fees that are being forced on the little guy to maintain records that they now don't have to maintain. Thus, you have the situation where the little guy has to have the expense of maintaining a bunch of records, and these things now are just yet another stumbling block. One of the other restrictions on the little guy is, if he files a suit against the big guys, there is a thing called discovery. Well, everybody else can have discovery, but these little patent guys, these little inventors, if they are filing a suit against a major infringer, not only do you have to be so specific about what you want--we have replaced a system where there will be one motion--we replaced it, which will require dozens of motions, each motion costing the little inventor tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. We are upping the cost, upping the cost, upping the cost, complications, and legal ramifications of a man or woman protecting his or her patent that is a legitimate patent all in the name of getting those terrible trolls, and the troll might not even be involved in this. There might not be any lawyer who is volunteering or is investing in this project. So what we have got, of course, is another thing where the person is there--you may call him a troll, but now the small business and education outreach part of this is, it authorizes the Patent Office director to create a patent troll database. That means that anybody who goes out to help these small inventors is going to be on a database. I guess you shouldn't really call that a database. Let's call that an enemies list. Because that is probably what it would be used for. Oh, no; that list was going to be made--here are the people you should stay away from. No, these aren't people guilty of crimes. These are people who have engaged in taking on powerful economic interests that are stealing the economic rights of our small inventors. As I mentioned earlier, it also eliminates the judicial review that we have had since 1836 for our inventors. Is there anything that could be more of an attack on the well-being of America's inventors? This, as I say, is a consistent pattern that I have seen for 25 years, where what we call ``globalists'' who are trying to take America's strong patent system and weaken it so that we will not have the advantage that we have had throughout the world. In the beginning, these people wanted to take fundamental parts of our patent system so that patents, even before they would be issued to the inventor, that they would be published for the whole world to see. That is what these people have been trying to get away with. Year after year after year, they whittle away at the patent protection of our people because they want a global system that is run by international, multinational companies. The people running those companies, do you think they are loyal to the people of the United States of America? Do you think they have our interests in mind as compared to a small inventor who loves the freedom and liberty that our country offers and understands that in another country, he won't have that same freedom? No, it has been the small inventor. It has been technological development that has given Americans the standard of living, the security, and the freedom that we have enjoyed, and now this body, we are having a bill rammed down our throats. It has been rammed through the system. Why? Because they don't want us to fully understand the implications of this bill, H.R. 3309, the Innovation Act, which will kill the small American inventors in this country. I would ask that our leadership consider postponing this so the American people will have a chance to get a hold of their Congressman, their Representative, so that we will talk and find out what the real effect of H.R. 3309 will have. I ask my colleagues in closing: Do we want to be known as the Congress that killed the U.S. patent system which has served the American people so well for 225 years? I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, there is a piece of legislation that will be going through the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that the American people need to be alerted about. It goes right to the heart of our prosperity, right to the heart of our national security, right to the heart of the well-being of average Americans. Our Founding Fathers believed that with technology and freedom--and, yes, with the profit motive--that those things would uplift all of humankind and that this would be the formula that would make America a great Nation. In fact, they wrote into our Constitution a mandate that guarantees the rights of inventors and authors. It is the only place in the body of the Constitution that the word ``right'' is used. I quote article I, section 8, clause 8 of the Constitution of the United States: The Congress shall have the power to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. This provision has served America well, leading to general prosperity, national security, and also to the decent living of average people. This is compared to the anxieties and the horror stories that the common man was living in, which prevailed in the days when our Constitution was written. Throughout the world, ordinary people lived in poverty, and they lived under repression and in a constant state of oppression. What broke this cycle of repression and deprivation and what built a great country here in the United States--an example to the world--was freedom and technology, yes, and guaranteed freedom and technology through the rule of law through our Constitution. The Americans worked hard to build this great country, yes, but that is not what made the difference. That is not what made us a great country, of how we broke out of that cycle of repression that mankind suffered under for so long. What made the difference was that technology multiplied the results of the hard work of our people. People have been working hard since ancient times. People still work hard today all over the world. The difference is that Americans brought technology to bear on these problems, multiplying the creation of wealth and, thus, the uplifting of ordinary people. It was our strong patent system that ensured that technology and freedom would work its magic. We can see now that we have had the strongest and the best patent system throughout our country's history, and it has been heralded throughout the world. Yet, today, multinational corporations, some of them run by Americans--and some wonder, when the Americans are running these companies, whose allegiance they have--want to diminish the patent protection of the American people. In my 25 years, battles have been fought over and over again, often turned back sometimes through compromise, but these efforts over these last 25 years have been aimed at dramatically weakening our patent system. So, basically, the argument has been made over and over again that we need to harmonize America's patent system with the rest of the world's. We have the strongest patent system in the world. We have rights that are guaranteed. Our other rights to speech and prayer, we would never think about harmonizing those with the rest of the world's--we would want to have the strongest constitutional protections--but now these big companies want to weaken the protection of the intellectual property of our own Americans by harmonizing our law with the weaker laws in Japan and Europe. I say, if they want to harmonize laws, they should be demanding that those other countries strengthen their laws so that the individuals in those countries are protected as Americans have been. How did that play specifically in terms of demands to change the law, demands which we have managed to thwart over these last 25 years? Basically, in Europe and Japan, if someone applies for a patent, after 18 months, that patent is published even if that patent has not been granted, meaning the application that the inventor has given out to show his genius is disclosed to everybody in the world. They wanted to do that to the American inventor. If you filed your patent, after 18 months, even if you hadn't received your patent, they were going to publish it. Talk about an invitation to steal. We beat that back, but it was a tough fight. These same people right now are the ones that we are fighting. They are trying to change the patent system in the bill that is going through on Wednesday in the Judiciary Committee. What do they also want to do? On what else did we have to fight back? In the United States, as the Constitution says, for 17 years, if someone files for a patent and is granted the patent, no matter how long it takes, you are going to have 17 years in which you own that new idea, that new concept. Guess what? Overseas, that is not the way it is. The minute you file overseas--let's say it takes 15 years for you to get your patent because it is very complicated, and it deals by its very nature with new science and new ideas--guess what? The clock starts ticking immediately when you file for the patent. Sometimes people will have all of their patents' time eaten up by the bureaucracy, which, of course, gives these major corporations in Europe the edge of influencing the bureaucracy when they are going to want to approve or to disapprove of a new innovation, a new piece of technology, for which someone is asking for a patent. Thus, these big corporations are able to force small inventors into deals for their creations, saying that we can fence you in, and you won't ever be able to use it anyway. We won most of these fights, and the two I just mentioned. Trying to make sure that a patent application that hasn't been granted won't be published, we beat that back. We beat back the idea that the clock is going to start ticking right away so that, if it takes a long time for a patent to be issued, the inventor won't lose all of his rights. We won most of those, and there were some compromises, but this fight never ends with these big companies, with these globalists who have a global sense of the economy, a global sense of freedom, a global sense of the American people in that we are not so unique and that we are just part of the global system. They keep coming back and coming back. As for the multinational corporations which have sought to remove these other things that I was mentioning a while ago and to put those in place, they now have another offensive on the way, and I find myself fighting for the small inventors, who are struggling to defend their patent rights, and for the patent rights of all Americans and America's innovators. Of course, we don't see these big corporations presenting an idea to Congress, saying we want to lessen the patent protection of ordinary Americans. No. Instead, they always have to come up with a very sinister-sounding word. Then they hire the best PR people in the world to promote this image in the public's mind. Before that sinister force that we had to diminish our patent protection for--that we had to make sure that our own inventors could have their patent applications published after 18 months or have the clock ticking away so they would never have a right to enforce their patents--that sinister portion in those days was called a ``submarine patent.'' It was described in these sinister, derogatory terms, and, boy, they almost succeeded, but we beat them back in their attempt to use a scare tactic to get the American people to fundamentally change our patent system, which has worked so well for us and has affected the standard of living of ordinary Americans. Now there is another term that is being used. It is even more sinister sounding. I wonder what PR firm was paid how many hundreds of thousands of dollars to come up with it and then millions of dollars to promote this sinister phrase so that people would accept it. The term is ``patent troll.'' Yes, ``patent troll.'' There is a good, sinister term. There are patent trolls out there; thus, we have got to change the basics of our patent system in a way that hurts the little guy's ability to protect his own intellectual property rights when it comes to his patent. These so-called ``patent trolls'' are patent holders or they are companies which represent patent holders. They are engaged in defending their rights as part of the Constitution--their intellectual property rights--against the infringement of those patents which they own. They are their patents. We are not talking about someone who is stealing a patent from someone. We are not talking about a frivolous suit. We are talking about someone who owns a patent that has been issued to him by the Patent Office. Those patents that they own are just as valid as, perhaps, all of the other patents that are granted by the Patent Office. Yet these huge corporate entities would infringe on the patent rights of the little guy and would give them the middle finger and tell them ``sue me if you think you can get any enforcement of it.'' No, no, no. These people would have us believe that patent trolls--people who are defending patents that are legitimate patents--are in some way doing something evil. What makes the patents of these people who are what they call ``patent trolls'' different than the good patents which are owned by these very same multinational corporations, by these very same corporations who bring very similar litigation forward when their patents are being violated? The so-called ``patent troll'' has been identified as being out for profit. This is where they say they are different, that they are out for profit, not from actually seeing technology being used, or that they are out for profit by getting involved in something that he or she did not invent. Surprise, surprise. We have got lawyers who are engaged in litigation only for the fact that they are going to make some money out of the litigation. Yes, we have frivolous lawsuits, and we should do what we can to stop them in this country, but that doesn't mean that you change the fundamental rights of those people whose rights are being violated. If the small inventor doesn't have the resources to enforce his or her patent, an individual or a company can buy those rights just like it could buy some land from someone who didn't have the resources to plant it or it could commercially try to sell it or to create a partnership. They can also, or create a partnership. The small inventor can now go into a partnership or sell his patent rights to someone else. Basically, if they can't enforce their rights because a big company is infringing upon them, they need help. Up until now, they have been legally entitled to get it. I have consulted with a number of outside individual inventors and groups, and they have reaffirmed that the legislation being proposed in the Judiciary Committee further disadvantages the little guy against the deep-pocketed, multi-national corporations. Many of these multi- national corporations, what they do now is they don't do patent searches when they are utilizing new technology to upgrade the machines and the equipment that they own. They don't do patent searches so that they can just say they didn't know. Well, in the past, they have taken great pains to make sure they weren't stepping on somebody's toes. Now, if somebody comes to them, they have intentionally not educated themselves to the ownership rights of this individual and they just tell them, well, sue me in court, knowing that most of these people are such little guys they can't enforce their rights. By the way, this is true of not just patents, but across the board. The little guys in our country need the help of lawyers who sometimes have to work on contingency or are many times just working on a profit motive to help a little guy against a big guy who has infringed on their rights. This guise of targeting the so-called ``patent trolls,'' meaning this person or a company who has contracted with the inventor to see that his or her patent rights are respected, that these guys are supposedly horrible. Well, how horrible it is making a business out of helping small inventors or just seeing that an inventor who has not had the ability to commercialize and to enforce his patents, that instead what we have got is people who are out to help that person now enforce the rights that he has under our Constitution, just the same if someone decided not to farm their land. If you own a piece of land and you have decided not to farm it and you want to turn it into some sort of a bird sanctuary, that is your right as long as you own that land. Our Constitution says that people who invent some new ideas have 17 years of ownership, property ownership, on their idea. Now they are trying to stop that; they are trying to change that. Proponents of this legislation that will go through the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday are covering up the fact that what we are dealing with here is someone who has stolen someone else's patent rights, and now they want to change the system so they can get away with that theft. That is the primary purpose behind this legislation. Now, they will say, oh, we just don't want these big companies, these multi-nationals, to be taken advantage of by someone who owns a patent, a lawful patent, and now is trying to enforce it after not having enforced it for a long period of time. Well, I would hope that all people will try their best to get their patent on the market and to do good things with these new technologies. In fact, 95 percent of the people I know who are inventors struggle their hardest to get their patent sold and into the commercial market and being put to use because they know other inventions are coming along that are going to take their place. So this is a very small issue, if it is one at all. But the fact is the market is coping with this, is encouraging people who own patents to put them in play. Let the marketplace, let our companies utilize those patents, because they will make a profit out of it. Tonight, I draw attention of the American people and my colleagues to H.R. 3309, the Innovation Act they call it this time, introduced by Chairman Goodlatte with 14 bipartisan cosponsors. This bill is scheduled, as I said, to be marked up in the House Judiciary Committee this week even though the committee has only held one hearing on this bill since the introduction of the bill, and that hearing was only 10 legislative days ago. There are major other forces besides these multi-national corporations that are at play here, whether we are talking about hospitals and doctors or whether we are talking about other groups in our society like universities and others who own patents. There are a lot of people who are going to lose if this goes through, and they need time to communicate with their representatives. Instead, they are ramrodding this through very quickly. The witnesses at the hearing that they did have included former Patent Office Director Kappos, who made it clear that we should move slowly and with very great care in making such great changes to the patent law, especially in light of the fact that no one yet understands the implications of the last patent law they passed during the last Congress called the America Invents Act, the AIA. That was Congress' last patent bill, which is right now in the process of being implemented and interpreted by the Patent Office and by the courts. So we haven't even digested the last bite that Congress has taken out of the patent law apple, and now they want to gobble down a few more bites. In and of itself, this legislation is too broad, its implications are too unclear, and its effects are unknowable. That is what is going to happen. They are going to put that bill right through the process starting on Wednesday at the Judiciary Committee. That is what witnesses and other experts have indicated to us. The conclusion: move forward with caution. But that is not what is happening. Congress is being railroaded to pass this legislation on top of the last legislation. Well, what is going on here? The congressional ramrodding exemplifies the battle to diminish America's patent system that has been going on for 25 years, the same globalist multi-national corporations who may or may not have had interest of the American people at heart. According to the sponsors of H.R. 3309, it is an attempt to combat the problem of patent trolls. Oh, my gosh, be afraid of patent trolls and weaken the rights of our patent holders, even though a study that was mandated by Congress in the last patent bill that passed just a couple years ago, that study hasn't even been consulted and been made part of this debate. That study showed that this ``problem'' supposedly that we have, this patent troll thing that has come up now is not really a major driver of lawsuits. A study that was commissioned by the last patent bill has decided it is not--not--a major driver of lawsuits and has not caused a surge of new lawsuits. Most of the provisions in the legislation that they will pass through the committee this week will make it much more complicated, much more costly, and much more challenging to bring a lawsuit for patent infringement rather than making it simpler, cheaper, and easier to defend against baseless accusations of infringement. We are being told that these people who are leading the trolls have some sort of an unjustified claim, that these are false patents, these things shouldn't be enforced. But they haven't done that. What they are doing is preventing people who have regular claims, people who have legitimate claims, from seeking damages from big companies, big guys, who intentionally are infringing upon them. We are being asked to raise the bar for the inventor to bring a lawsuit to defend his or her rights. We are making it more difficult for the inventor, rather than easier for these big companies to brush away frivolous lawsuits. We instead are making it harder on inventors to defend their legitimate property rights. So rather than lowering the bar to allow small business to defend itself against frivolous lawsuits, we are basically raising the bar when it comes to inventors to protect their rights. In addition, under the claim of ``technical correction,'' this legislation proposes to remove the patent system's only independent judicial process. That is in section 45 of title 35. If this passes, inventors who are not satisfied that the Patent Office has actually treated them fairly, that the bureaucracy has worked within the law, that they have not been cheated, there is not some collusion going on, the fact is there will be no recourse to an inventor who feels that he has been wronged by our own bureaucracy. Although this safeguard that we have had that prevents the bureaucracy from doing things that are illegal or out of procedure or violating someone's rights, those safeguards of having a judicial review have been part of our American law system since 1836. It isn't some antiquated process; it is independent judicial review. Last year, the Supreme Court of the United States in Kappos v. Hyatt reaffirmed the importance of this provision. Now the Patent Office has been requested that judicial review be done away with because it is so burdensome--so burdensome--to have a judicial review in case some people within our bureaucracy are acting illegally or incompetently. Oh, we can't allow that because it is too burdensome for the bureaucracy to defend their actions in a courtroom even though this happens on very rare occasions, very rare occasions because we have that recourse. Take away that recourse and those problems will be a lot more. They will grow because there will be nothing to stop them from wrong action in the bureaucracy. The Patent Office wants to strip away the rights of Americans because it is inconvenient to their bureaucracy. The legislation going before the Judiciary Committee here in the House this week is consistent with the decades-long battle being waged on America's independent inventors by multi-national corporations. Here are a few of the provisions: Might I ask the Chair how much more time I have remaining.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. The Innovation Act will create more paperwork when the inventor files for an infringement claim, thus increasing the cost to defend their rights and a potential for having the case dismissed on a technicality is greatly expanded. The Innovation Act will switch us to a ``loser pays'' system, which means the little guy is going to fight some future corporation who has got lawyers on their payroll. That little guy now has to realize he is going to pay enormous costs where the, of course, big corporation only has to pay the legal fees. If you have loser pays, that is what that provision is all about. The big corporation will only have to pay for that little guy. The little guy will have to pay huge expenses and thus, what is it, he is deterred from protecting his own rights. Let's just say loser pays is a loser for the little guy and a big winner for the big guy. This is so broad they are expanding now who will have to pay with the loser pays. This bill actually brings in people who will now be expected to pay the expenses of these big corporations who are infringing. If that guy loses, if the little guy loses, anybody who has even helped the little guy will be brought in and they will be libel for the loser pays provisions. What does that mean? That means little guys will never be able to get outside help from people to invest in their suit. Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of the picture tube, had to get people to help him because RCA was ripping him off and he had people invest to help pay for his legal fees. This bill would eliminate that by making all of those people libel. Section 4 of this new bill, the Innovation Act, would create new requirements that a patent holder must meet, once filing a claim of infringement, by providing information about all parties. When he files for an infringement, he has to give information of all the parties, including those people who may have invested in his suit. Thus, we have a blanket. Now we have people exposed to all sorts of harassment. Just for what? For backing up someone's right and saying, I will give you some money to defend your rights. There is no reason for us to have this type of exposure that has never been required before. This will, again, put great pressure on people not to get involved to help those people whose patents are being infringed upon. There is a provision in the bill that actually limits the amount of time and things that can be required in discovery, which means the little guy will now have to have many motions of discovery, and every motion will cost him money, rather than having one motion. These things are very complicated and very hard to understand for the American people, but what they add up to, they have been thought out very well because the big companies know how to beat the little guys down, and that is what this bill is all about. If we were instead trying to eliminate frivolous lawsuits, which we should, there would be a whole different approach to this. This would be enabling those large companies to defeat frivolous lawsuits. Instead, what we have going through our Judiciary Committee is a bill that makes it harder for those people who are the innovators and the inventors to defend their intellectual property rights. I would ask my fellow colleagues to join me in opposing this bill. And I ask the American people to pay attention to what is going on and make sure that this attempt to, again, diminish the patent rights of the American people is defeated and, again, that the rights of our people to live in prosperity and to have national security based on our great innovation is protected from multinational corporations who are motivated simply by greed and not for the benefit of the people of the United States. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

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