Political Quotes

“I strongly oppose the gentleman's amendment to strike the bill's provisions regarding section 145. The bill's provisions are strongly supported by the Patent Office. The amendment would strike one of the bill's most important reforms for preventing patent trolls from obtaining low-quality patents and bringing extortionate lawsuits. The bill's provisions are necessary because of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Kappos v. Hyatt which construed section 145 to allow an applicant to evade substantive patent examination in the Patent Office and to instead present his evidence of patentability for the first time in Federal district court. A district judge would then be required to make de novo findings of patentability. Section 145 is outdated and unnecessary. Today, applicants have administrative routes for offering new evidence. Even after a board decision affirming the examiner's rejection, an applicant can file a continuation application and can introduce new evidence of patentability in that continuation. Ever since 1836, the United States has required that all patent applications be reviewed by patent examiners with a scientific education, people who understand the technology that the patent covers. This helps to ensure that patents are not issued for inventions that are already in the public domain or that would be obvious to a person skilled in the technology.…”