Political Quotes

“I rise today to protect and secure the user fees paid by America's inventors and businesses to the Patent and Trademark Office, and to stabilize that Office's funding, by introducing the Patent Fee Integrity Act. I want to thank my co- sponsors on this bill, Senators Coburn, Klobuchar, and Flake. Throughout most of its history, taxpayers supported the operations of the Patent and Trademark Office, or PTO, through appropriations from general funds. However, in 1990, Congress established a 69 percent user fee ``surcharge,'' so that the PTO became funded entirely through fees paid by its users, the American inventors who make our country the world's technological leader. Unfortunately, almost immediately, Congress began using the funds that inventors paid to protect their inventions for other purposes. In 1992, $8.1 million in user fees were diverted. In 1993, $12.3 million was diverted. In 1994, $14.7 million. So it continued, growing each year, until what started as a trickle became a flood in 1998, with $199 million in PTO user fees diverted. PTO user fees continued to be diverted in most of the following years, at varying levels. In fiscal year 2011, as Congress was finishing its work on major patent reform, a new fee diversion record was set, a staggering $209 million in user fees diverted from the PTO that year.…”