Political Quotes

“In my office there are two photographs, one with me and Edwards Deming and the other of Dr. Ray Damadian, who is the inventor of the MRI. Dr. Damadian visited our office, and I said, What's wrong with this bill? He said, Everything. He said, If this bill were law when I invented the MRI, today we would not have the MRI. There are a lot of problems with this bill. This is my fourth patent fight with my esteemed colleague from Texas, but we do agree on most issues; but now we have two persons who simply disagree on policy. Back in 2004 when I chaired the Small Business Committee, I was instrumental in putting in a fixed-fee structure for small businesses; and to do that, I had stricken from the bill the authority of the PTO Director to set fees. This new bill gives to the PTO Director the ability to set fees, even though the initial filing fees for small businesses have been lowered. The problem is that the PTO can come in and simply raise fees to so-call ``manage their operations.'' In fact, two reports, ``The 21st Century Strategic Plan'' filed in June of 2002 by the U.S. PTO, said fees were based upon a highly progressive system aimed at strictly limiting applications containing very high numbers of claims and also the same thing in 2007. Their idea of decreasing claims in the patent office is to raise fees. Obviously, who's that going to hurt? It's going to be the little guy, and that's why it's one of many reasons I oppose this bill.…”