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March 11, 1998
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The high-priced lobbyists for the big multinationals are crawling
all over Capitol Hill this month to urge passage of Senator Orrin
Hatch's bill, S.507. It is called the Omnibus Patent bill, but it
ought to be called the Ominous Patent bill because it would take away
the traditional rights of American inventors in order to accommodate
the multinationals and their foreign trading partners.
This is a classic battle of giant U.S. corporations versus the
little guys. In this case, the little guys are the independent
inventors, who are the mainspring of American progress and prosperity,
plus the small businessmen, who are the source of nearly all the new
jobs that are created.
S.507 was slightly amended before it came out of Hatch's Judiciary
Committee, as was its companion bill H.R.400 before it passed the House
last year, but both bills are so totally bad that they cannot be
amended to make them acceptable. The bills' proponents arrogantly
continue to argue for the original purposes of the bills, stating their
intent to achieve them either by restoring the deleted sections or by
implementing them afterwards by bureaucratic fiat.
At stake in S.507 is one of our most important constitutional
rights: the right of inventors to have, for limited times, "the
exclusive right to their . . . discoveries," thus giving the inventor
the time to perfect his invention and raise the resources to market it.
This powerful incentive is unique to America, and is the chief reason
why America has produced ten times as many significant inventions as
the rest of the world combined.
Under our highly successful system, when the inventor applies for
a patent, his application is held in total secrecy by the U.S. Patent
Office until the patent is issued. The patent then gives the inventor
the legal safeguard to protect his invention against those who want to
steal it or infringe it.
Publication of an inventor's application before the patent is
issued would serve the financial interests of the multinational
corporations, who could use their enormous resources to bully the
independent inventor into making a cheap deal, or to invalidate his
patent application, or to steal his idea and beat him into production.
The Japanese, who don't invent anything but are mighty clever
copycats, have been trying for years to break our system. They have
been demanding that all the details of every invention be made public
18 months after the application is filed, regardless of whether or not
a patent is ever issued.
The American and Japanese systems are very different. Japan's
economy is based on a partnership between government and the big
corporations, and the Japanese patent system operates to make sure that
industry controls and uses new innovations.
The U.S. system, on the other hand, favors private property,
individual innovation and ingenuity, and an open door of opportunity
for entrepreneurs. Our patent system is the centerpiece of this system
and is designed to protect the rights of the individual inventors.
S.507 is a disgraceful attempt to codify a backroom deal made by
then-Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown on August 16, 1994 with Japanese
Ambassador Takakazu Kuriyama promising that our patent law would be
changed to acquiesce in the Japanese demands. Nobody denied this paper
trail in the two days of House debate last year.
S.507 also includes another Japanese demand, a change in our
reexamination process. The bill would allow outside parties, both
foreign and domestic, to challenge all existing U.S. patents.
The main, indeed the only, argument for S.507 is that we should
"harmonize" our patent system with the rest of the world, but that's
a false description of this bill. It does nothing to get U.S. patents
recognized worldwide; instead, it just diminishes the rights of U.S.
inventors.
The text of S.507 makes clear why the multinational corporations
are lobbying so intensely for S.507. It would transform the U.S.
Patent Office into a private corporation, whose board of directors must
include representatives of big corporations.
Patent Commissioner Bruce Lehman is lobbying for S.507 because the
private corporation status would facilitate plans to build a $1.3
billion Patent and Trademark Office headquarters in Virginia so lavish
that it has been dubbed the PTO Taj Mahal. Lehman has shown his
disdain for independent inventors by calling them "weekend
hobbyists."
Some might think that the importance of independent inventors has
diminished because of the large research labs of multinational
corporations. But a Harvard study in the 1960s found that, of 703
innovations introduced after 1945, only 133 came out of the
laboratories of big corporations.
Another study in 1970 of 61 of the most significant 20th century
inventions found that half of the inventions had been produced by
individuals. Business consultant Paul Herbig states in his 1994 book,
"The Innovation Matrix," that independent inventors tend to make the
most radical innovations in technology because they are not held back
by corporate group-think.
Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) will hold a Small Business Committee
hearing on March 31 to hear from some of the inventors and Nobel
Laureates
who oppose S.507 and were excluded from the one brief hearing
held by Orrin Hatch.
Further Reading: PATENT INFO
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