Political Quotes

“Madam President, today, I rise to discuss section 18 of H.R. 1249, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. Consistent with the statement in the Record by Chairman Lamar Smith on June 23, 2011, I understand that section 18 will not make all business method patents subject to review by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Rather, section 18 is designed to address the problem of low-quality business method patents that are commonly associated with the Federal circuit's 1998 State Street decision. I further understand that section 18 of the bill specifically exempts ``patents for technological inventions'' from this new review at USPTO. Patents for technological inventions are those patents whose novelty turns on a technological innovation over the prior art and are concerned with a technical problem which is solved with a technical solution. The technological innovation exception does not exclude a patent from section 18 simply because it recites technology. Inventions related to manufacturing and machines that do not simply use known technology to accomplish a novel business process would be excluded from review under section 18. For example, section 18 would not cover patents related to the manufacture and distribution of machinery to count, sort, and authenticate currency.…”