Dana Rohrabacher: “I would challenge Members on the other side of this debate to spend their time and their 5 minutes explaining to the…”

“I would challenge Members on the other side of this debate to spend their time and their 5 minutes explaining to the American people why what they are proposing directly parallels a secret agreement that we have made with Japan. They will have time on their side to answer that. The fact is that the driving force behind this, whether or not the members of the committee are themselves committed to this agreement, the driving force behind this has been to fulfill this agreement. How can you tell? Because there were two avenues to this agreement in harmonizing our law with Japan. There were two major factors that made American law different than the Japanese law. No. 1 was we had a guaranteed patent term, a guaranteed patent term which meant no matter how long it takes you to get your patent issued, at the end of that time period, would be guaranteed 17 years of patent protection and, No. 2, the other aspect of American patent law, since the founding of our country, was that there was a right of confidentiality. The inventor had a right, when he applied for a patent, that that would be kept secret and, yes, secret really meant something to those people and has meant a lot to our technological edge throughout the years. They had a right to that until the patent was issued. This legislation goes in exactly the opposite direction, changes the fundamental rules of the game to correspond with this agreement to harmonize our law with Japan.”