BILL TO `HARMONIZE' PATENT SYSTEM FULL OF SOUR NOTES.

Byline: Dana Rohrabacher 

CONGRESS is set to vote on legislation today that will dramatically change the U.S. patent system - for the worse.

Inventors and other users of the patent office are outraged over HR 400, a bill so destructive they've named it the ``Steal American Technology Act.''

What's wrong with the bill? Perhaps most egregious is its mandate that the U.S. patent office publish patent applications 18 months after they are filed, regardless of whether a patent has been issued to the inventor.

Early publication of pending patent applications is an invitation for every thief and copycat in the world, for our foreign competitors and worst enemies, to steal our very best technology and use it against our own people.

The Steal American Technology Act also ``corporatizes'' the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, essentially wiping it out and re-creating it as a kind of ``Patent Inc.'' There are many government agencies which can and should be privatized, but this isn't one of them. The decisions patent examiners make determine the ownership of technologies worth millions and sometimes billions of dollars. These are the last people we should expose to corrupting influences.

Yet HR 400 allows Patent Inc. to accept cash and other contributions from private corporations and foreign governments - a recipe for disaster in an era of White House influence peddling and illegal campaign financing schemes which depend on the largess of foreign interests.

Who's behind this insidious effort to gut the patent protections Americans have enjoyed for more than 200 years? Surprisingly enough, our own patent commissioner, his Japanese counterpart, and some of America's largest multinational corporations. They are engaged in an effort to, they say, ``harmonize'' the U.S. patent system with the patent systems in Europe and Japan. Not a bad idea if they seek to strengthen patent protections in Europe and Japan so citizens in those countries will benefit from the same strong intellectual property rights Americans have, but that's not their plan.

Instead, HR 400 lowers the level of patent protections for Americans. That's crazy.

Why is a bill so blatantly against America's interests on the verge of passing? Corporate giants supporting HR 400 are looking for a system that guards against surprises. They plan product innovations years in advance. Take computer chip maker Intel: it tends to make incremental product improvements, introducing, for example, a 100 mHz Pentium processor followed by a faster 133 mHz processor and so on.

The last thing Intel wants is some independent inventor making a technological breakthrough that advances computer chip technology two or three generations in one leap, leaving Intel's current technology in the dust.

The Japanese system protects against this by allowing the giants of industry to see what's coming, surround the inventor's patent and copy his technology with little regard for his rights.

In contrast, America protects the rights of that individual inventor. The rewards have been incredible. Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, Alexander Graham Bell and countless others invented breakthrough technologies that created entire industries. Millions of Americans were put to work and our standard of living improved dramatically because of their efforts. We ought to preserve the patent system that encouraged these innovators and allowed them to prosper.

Today, I will offer a substitute amendment to wipe out HR 400 and replace it with legislation that will strengthen the American patent system. It's going to be a very close vote.

Democracy requires vigilance against those who would compromise our rights and freedoms. Today's attack on America's inventors must be turned back, or we will all pay dearly for it.