Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, some have argued that the first-to-file provision in this bill violates the constitutional provision giving Congress the power to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times for authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries. The first key point to note is that the text does not define inventor. Under H.R. 1249, one still has to be an inventor to be awarded the patent, as the Constitution requires. Indeed, former Bush administration Attorney General Michael Mukasey noted in a May 2011 letter to Patent Office Director David Kappos that ``the second inventor is no less an inventor for having invented second.'' And former Attorney General Mukasey correctly points out that the Constitution grants Congress the power to ``promote the progress of the science and useful arts'' but does not say how it can or should do so. Congress deciding that awarding patents to inventors who are the first- to-file is consistent with that constitutional power. The Patent Act of 1793 makes no mention of needing to be the first- to-invent. A patent was valid as long as the invention was not an invention already in the public domain or derived from another person. It was not until 1870 that there was a specific process put in place to even determine who the first-to-invent was. The bottom line is that this bill is a clear exercise of Congress' constitutional power to secure patent rights to inventors. {time} 1950”