Nobel Laureates to the Rescue on Patent Deform: Will Congress Heed Call to Protect a National (Security) Asset?

(Washington, D.C.): The
ranks of those opposed to impending
legislative efforts to alter the
time-tested U.S. patent system beyond
recognition were powerfully swelled
yesterday by the entry into the fray of
twenty-two Nobel Laureates. Among those
registering their strong objection to S.
507, the so-called “The Patent
Improvement Act,” were: economist Franco
Modigliani of MIT; Harvard
chemist Dudley Herschbach;
MIT physicist Jerome Friedman;
University of Chicago economist Milton
Friedman; and MIT economist Paul
Samuelson.

A letter signed by 22 of the Nation’s
Laureates (see the
attached) urges Congress to oppose
the passage of S. 507 on the grounds that
it:

“…Could result in lasting
harm to the United States and the
world….It will prove very
damaging to American small
investors and thereby discourage
the flow of new inventions that
have contributed so much to
America’s superior performance in
the advancement of Science and
technology. It will do so by
curtailing the protection they
obtain through patents relative
to the large multi-national
corporations.”
(Emphasis added.)

Under the Shadow

This concern is rooted in part in the
“streamlining” envisioned by
this legislation — which is being
championed in the Senate by Sen.
Orrin Hatch (R-UT) — at the
expense of the constitutionally-mandated
patent rights of American citizens.
Particularly worrisome is the fact that
S. 507 would require the publication
of patent applications 18 months after
filing, irrespective of whether a
patent has been issued or not.

This would have the effect of denying
U.S. inventors protection against large
multinationals or foreign-owned
enterprises with a demonstrated interest
in stealing America’s technological
seed-corn. In War by Other Means,
an in-depth study by John Fialka of
economic espionage employed by foreign
governments and companies to the
detriment of the United States, President
Clinton’s former chief economist, Laura
D’Andrea Tyson, is quoted as estimating
that the U.S. lost $105 billion
in potential sales from 1985-1989 due to
patent theft by the Japanese.⁽¹⁾

Threat to National Security

Such expedited publication of patent
applications — entailing the disclosure
of sufficiently detailed information to
produce working models — would
not only make wholesale patent
infringement likely. It would
also increase the chances that technology
with considerable potential in the
national security field may be released
before that potential is properly
evaluated and protected by patent secrecy
orders.

A Voice of Reason

In the months leading up to the
Laureates’ intervention, one of the most
prominent and effective opponents of the
kind of patent deform proposed
by S. 507 has been Rep. Dana
Rohrabacher (R-CA). In lengthy
remarks extemporaneously delivered on the
House floor on Wednesday night, Rep.
Rohrabacher illuminated some of the
serious problems with this legislation.
He then addressed the larger syndrome of
which the “Patent Improvement”
bill is just one manifestation:

“[In the future,] we are
going to be facing more and more
challenges to our freedom and to
our prosperity as Americans from
those who are trying to foist off
on us the necessity of
transferring authority and power
to world organizations and to
multinational organizations. The
patent fight is the first fight,
because it has been the first one
we have been able to identify
where actual legal
protections enjoyed by
Americans are being diminished in
order to have a harmonization of
law overseas. That, in itself,
would be wrong. But the
side effects of giving huge
multinational corporations and
foreign corporations the power
over Americans to steal their new
ideas, which will undermine our
economy, not
even to mention what it does to
the lives of these poor inventors
who spent their whole lives
trying to develop something, this
shows that it is a bad idea on a
number of levels.”

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy commends the
22 Nobel Laureates, Rep. Rohrabacher and
all those opposed to S. 507 and the
assault on the Nation’s inventiveness —
with all that implies for its security,
economic and technological interests. It
seconds the appeal issued by the
Laureates who write “We hold that
Congress, before embarking on a
revision of our time-tested patent system,
should hold extensive hearings on whether
there are serious flaws in the present
system that need to be addressed and, if
so, how best to deal with them.”

Indeed, the Center notes that the
hearings held to date have been almost
exclusively vehicles for proponents of
dumbing-down the U.S. patent system by
“conforming” it with the
demonstrably less effective ones in place
in Europe and Japan. If the
recommendations of some of the country’s
most brilliant citizens — on behalf of all
its people — are heeded, Congress will
urgently act to take testimony from its
Nobel Prize winners, as well as from
those who can address the national
security implications of the proposed
patent deforms.

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1. For more on the
shortcoming of S. 507, see the Casey
Institute’s Perspective
entitled Hatch’s ‘Submarine’
Patent Deform Bill Threatens To Sink The
Engine of U.S. Competitiveness, National
Security ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-C_70″>No. 97-C 70, 21
May 1997).