Political Quotes

“I must strongly oppose this substitute amendment. It is quite simply a poison bill that is designed to kill the Innovation Act. Although the substitute cuts and pastes a few provisions from the current bill, it includes additional provisions that create serious problems and excludes whole sections of the Innovation Act that are vital for America's job creators and innovators. This substitute does not even include all of the provisions of the Leahy-Lee bill. It omits provisions that are important to our Senate colleagues. The amendment's transparency provision would require a patent owner to ``disclose to the court and all adverse parties any person known by the patentee to have a financial interest of any kind in a party to the proceeding.'' The bill then defines financial interest in the context of the judicial recusal provision in the law. Under this definition, ``financial interest'' means ``ownership of a legal or equitable interest however small.'' This would clearly appear to include ownership of a single share of stock in a company. Moreover, this disclosure is required not just to be made with respect to the patentee but, by the terms of the bill, with respect to ``a party to the proceeding.'' This would mean that a patentee would have to disclose all known shareholders of even the defendant or any other party in the lawsuit. This is obviously an absurd requirement.…”