WASHINGTON — An unlikely coalition of small inventors, university scholars and economic nationalists--including Texas businessman Ross Perot--are waging a campaign to derail a controversial modernization of the nation's two-century-old patent system.
The battle over overhauling the federal system that provides inventors legal protection for their ideas has significant implications for American competitiveness and innovation.
And like the controversy that surrounded the North American Free Trade Agreement, it spotlights an increasingly stark political division in Washington: those who see the U.S. economy in global terms and those who believe the nation's economy can be managed largely in isolation.
Squaring off over the issue are independent inventors and some of the nation's biggest corporations--including Intel Corp., AT&T Corp., General Motors Corp. and Dow Chemical Corp. Also teaming up against patent reform is an unlikely coalition of political opposites, including Perot, liberal economist Paul Samuelson and conservative author Phyllis Schlafly, who condemns patent reform legislation as "the most dangerous bill in the current Congress."
They are contesting two measures, one passed by the House last spring and a companion bill expected to go before the Senate early next year. The measures would speed disclosure of new ideas by requiring that patent applications, in most cases, be made public after 18 months as is done in Japan, Europe and most other foreign nations.
The bills would also make it easier to challenge patents and boost the ability of corporations to protect trade secrets. Finally, the measures would privatize the U.S. patent office, which was established by George Washington in 1790 and remains so antiquated that it takes an average of 21 months--and as long as 25 years--to issue new patents.
Opponents believe that putting patents on a fast track will expose small inventors to greater risk that their inventions will be stolen by big companies before their ideas receive full legal protection. They also say that making the patent office a government-owned corporation could subject patent examiners to greater industry pressure and compromise their ability to render impartial decisions.
"Early publication of patent applications makes independent inventors potentially the victims of large companies anywhere in the world," said Steven Michael Shore, president of Alliance for American Innovation, a Washington-based group that represents thousands of small inventors. "How would you like to have to spend millions of dollars to litigate against a multinational corporation that has stolen your idea?"
In September, economist Samuelson and two dozen other Nobel laureates wrote a letter to Congress opposing patent reform, saying changing the nation's patent laws would discourage small, independent inventors and stifle the American economy.
But big companies say it is they who have been victimized by a slow-moving and understaffed patent office, which still has not fully computerized its operations even though it has awarded more than $500 million in contracts over the last decade to modernize operations.
They say the current patent system encourages small inventors to string out the confidential patent review process until a manufacturer introduces an actual product that appears similar to the inventor's idea. The small inventor then surfaces and threatens the manufacturer with an infringement suit over a patent application of which the maker had no prior knowledge.
A recent General Accounting Office study found that it took an average of 21 months and as long as 25 years to issue a patent in 1994, the latest year for which figures are available. Although that was an improvement over the average 26 months it took in 1982, critics say dramatic improvements are unlikely as the patent office--which received a record 211,000 patent applications last year--is swamped with a rising tide of submissions.
"To take two or three years to get a patent is a problem," said Carl Silverman, director of intellectual property at the computer chip-making giant, Intel, which holds 1,500 patents. "We need to hasten the time from filing to issuance because some people 'game' the patent system for decades."
Congress thought it had introduced an incentive to speed up the process two years ago when it amended the patent law to make patents valid for 20 years after the date of application rather than the previous standard of 17 years from the date a patent is issued. Lawmakers thought the change would spur inventors and examiners to work together on reviews in order to maximize the useful life of patent protection.
The change was made after a series of international negotiations involving U.S. Patent Commissioner Bruce Lehman; the late Ron Brown, former Commerce Secretary; and Japanese trade officials.
