Darrell Issa: “It's been 8 years since this bill began being kicked around as a pilot. Some people would be less happy to announce it…”

“It's been 8 years since this bill began being kicked around as a pilot. Some people would be less happy to announce it than I, but I would like to find them. Eight years ago when I began the dialogue with my colleagues, then the subcommittee ranking member, Mr. Berman, said, Tell me more about this problem. And I told him from life experience of the problem of these very talented judges, magistrates, and Federal judges who wanted to do a good job on patents, but it was almost always their first patent, and they lacked a support system to make it happen in both large and small districts. I told them how the southern district of San Diego had found ways to try to improve the system, gleaning some additional expertise from one or two judges who preferred these cases over some others and who actually sought them out. I also told some of my fellow colleagues about the horror stories of a magistrate ascending to the bench, finding that what he got from each of the other members were all their patent cases, and suddenly he had a backlog of these, had to find out what a Markman hearing was, had to start getting into technical issues, one on electronics, another on biotech, another one on telecommunications. So over the years, we have all been educated well beyond that initial anecdotal example. Then Orrin Hatch, Chairman Hatch, was supportive. Now Chairman Leahy is supportive.”