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Inventing a new constitution

Under pressure from the Japanese government, the Clinton Administration, in 1994, agreed to abandon our patent system. In the last months of 1999, the agreement was buried deep within hundreds of pages of legislation dealing with GATT, fast-tracked through the House of Representatives, where it passed, and is speeding its way along the same path in the Senate. If spineless Congressional leaders allow this change in patent systems, they will be stifling our intellectual and technological innovation and siphoning off our Constitutional rights.

Patent law was established in the constitution and is essential to our success. Protecting intellectual and technological innovation was so important to the founders that they set the framework for it in the first article of the Constitution, before, even freedom of speech or religion.

"The Congress shall have power ... to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to writing and discoveries."

Article One, section eight, paragraph eight sets up the most formidable patent system in the world. It guarantees a secret approval process and that once the process is complete and a patent is granted, the holder of the patent has exclusive rights to the invention for 17 years. This is the notion of property rights at its finest, the combining of public and private good at its smoothest and one hell of an incentive to invention. It is no coincidence that the Age of Technology and America's Century coincide.

A 17-year economic monopoly is what brought this country the telephone, the washing machine and Coke. It brought light bulbs, automobiles, and computers. Innovation is what makes this country an economic powerhouse; what makes any country an economic powerhouse, as Japan's Ministry of Trade realized in 1994.

Japanese companies see our patent system as a barrier to their continued profitability, and so seek to abolish it. The administration rolled over, and a spineless congress seems willing to let them get away with it.

Japan's economic plan for the new century has been fairly well laid out in a book written by Fumio Kodama, a man who happens to be one of Japan's top trade advisors. The book advises Japanese business groups to borrow technology from other countries and fuse it with their own if they want to keep the recently restarted economic engine running.

Some inventors, however, have a problem with Japanese borrowing and sue under the protection of the US patent system. The system, which a Japanese government memo calls "unacceptable," will soon cease to exist.

Proposed to replace what we have now is a patent system that resembles the one in Britain. Though it still guarantees exclusive rights once a patent is granted, its flaw is in the approval process. The process accounts for "prior user rights." Essentially, while an inventor is waiting for a patent, any large company can see what is being patented and make the claim that they have already invented it, but we're keeping it as a trade secret. Once the claim is made, substantiated or not, the patent is denied.

If Congress gives away our rights, the results would be disastrous. With any shot at economic monopoly virtually destroyed, there is no incentive to invent. That leaves nothing, even for Japanese corporations to borrow. If people shared their inventions with the world for the benefit of all humans, this wouldn't be a problem. But, they don't. People share their inventions with the world for the benefit of their bank accounts. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but cold, hard cash is its muse.

Not only does this agreement sap the desire to spread innovation, but it flat out gives away the Constitutional right of each and every United States citizen to protect his or her intellectual property.

During the War of 1812, the patent commissioner stood on the steps of the patent office and said to British troops invading the city, "Please don't burn this building. It contains your future as well as our own." Those words are as true today as they were then. Our future is quickly and quietly being stolen away under the thin guise of free trade.

Moniqua Lane is political science and history junior. She can be reached at editor@wildcat.arizona.edu