Marcy Kaptur: “it is obvious that this patent bill has engendered substantial and necessary debate. That means that there are some…”

“it is obvious that this patent bill has engendered substantial and necessary debate. That means that there are some unsolved problems inherent in the basic bill. One of the most important issues that we wish to bring up for amendment today has to do with the treatment of small business as opposed to big business in the base bill. Our amendment would exempt small business as defined by the Patent Office itself, 500 or fewer employees, based on the fee schedule that they use to distinguish between large and small business. It would exempt small business, universities, and individual independent inventors from having their patents published prior to when that patent is granted. This gets at one of the major objections of the opponents to the base bill. Our amendment also fixes the submarine problem, which I will discuss in a second, but basically it sets up a process that is more fair to get at the problem of when a patent has not risen out of the depths of the review process, and, third, it strikes the reexamination provisions. Because what we do not want to do is to open up more litigation for the small inventor that really does not have the deep pockets of some of those who very much want to receive some of the benefits in the parts of H.R. 400 that we do like. So our amendment has three parts to it: It exempts small business, universities, and individual independent inventors from having their patents published prior to grant.”