U.S. House of Representatives

Committee on the Judiciary

News Advisory

For immediate release

Contact: Sam Stratman/Michelle Morgan

(202) 225-2492

March 24, 1999

Hearing Scheduled on American Inventors Protection Act

The U.S. is by far the world's largest producer of intellectual property, a result of rational policies that encourage development of new inventions and processes. Despite this success, the 210 year-old U.S. patent system has problems: an unwieldy bureaucracy within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; abuses of patent law that inflate costs of products and services for American consumers; and new challenges to our patent system by other nations seeking to protect inventors, small businesses and industries. These and other issues will be addressed in legislation drafted by U.S. Rep. Howard Coble (R-NC), to be introduced shortly.

WHAT: Hearing on American Inventors Protection Act

WHO: Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property

WHEN: Thursday, March 25 at 2:00 p.m.

WHERE: Room 2237, Rayburn House Office Building

Summary and Purpose of the American Inventors Protection Act:

• Transforms the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) into an independent agency under the policy direction of the Secretary of Commerce providing much needed operational flexibility to reduce the logjam of requests for services and to reduce long delays in decisions by patent and trademark examiners.

• Establishes new disclosure requirements governing invention promotion services, an increasing source of fraud within the patent world.



• Curbs abusive patent "submarining" in which an application is allowed to languish in secrecy for years. The solution is early publication of a patent claim combined with important rights to protect an inventor from the theft of an idea. Currently, submariners game the system and have no real intention of commercializing their ideas, a practice that is contrary to the spirit of U.S. Patent law. Publication will not occur for applicants who file domestically only by request.



• Improves the process in the PTO to be used in lieu of costly court litigation for patent owners and members of the public to determine the proper scope and coverage of patent claims.