Marcy Kaptur: “We know how much they have been taking in other ways, taking health benefits away from our people, taking good wages…”

“We know how much they have been taking in other ways, taking health benefits away from our people, taking good wages away from our people, literally taking jobs and transporting them someplace else. And our patent system has been at the basis of the creativity of this country. It is a great, great system. By the way, I will say for the record, there is a website one can go to, www.uscourts.gov/caseload2006.contents.html. And on that site, you can look at these various cases to see that the courts aren't overloaded. The courts aren't saying they are overloaded in terms of suits relating to patents. But one of the parts of the bill that truly, truly concerns me, and why I shall vote against it, is that these very large transnational corporations want to change the longstanding practice of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office of granting a patent to the person who actually invented it. We call it 'first to invent.' They want to change it to 'first to file.' In other words, if they get the system they want, which means that an inventor takes their brilliant idea to the Patent and Trademark Office, even before it is approved, it has to be posted on a Web site, and somebody in China or somebody in Tokyo can take that, file it in their country, and they say, 'grant the patent to the first to file.' Not the first to invent. We protect individuals in this country. We protect that intellectual capital.…”