Dana Rohrabacher: “Our Constitution was designed and written to protect inventors, not filers. The words are very clear. ``Inventor'' is in…”

“Our Constitution was designed and written to protect inventors, not filers. The words are very clear. ``Inventor'' is in the Constitution, ``filers'' is not in the Constitution. So why are we having this dispute about the constitutionality of this provision which is very clearly in the Constitution? Are there all sorts of problems that we have people fighting as to who really invented something? No, we don't have a lot of problems. The reason why we have to change this is to harmonize our law, American patent law, with Europe. There are opponents that stated this over and over again in the early part of this debate, that the purpose was harmonizing American law with the rest of the world. Well, American law has always been stronger; we've had the strongest patent protection in the world. So what does harmonize mean? It means weakening our constitutionally protected patent rights. The purpose of the bill is to weaken a constitutionally protected right that has been in place since the founding of our country. It should be rejected.”