July 23 1999
The Honorable Bill McCullum
P.O. Box 532015
Orlando, FL 32853-9764
Dear Congressman McCullum
This is to suggest a campaign issue for your campaign for the U.S. Senate. The issue involves the payment of Maintenance Fees to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to keep issued patents in force.
Following is a quote from a letter which I received from Congressman Porter Goss in 1997: "The development of new products has been one of the hallmarks of American business and a source of national pride. A fundamental principle of our free-enterprise system is that inventors have a right to receive fair compensation for the products they create. People like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford brought revolutionary change to our world. The safeguard for these ideas has been our system of Patents and Copyrights."
I agree with this principle and have been practicing Patent law for 38 years. Unfortunately, enactment of Public Law 96-517, December 12, 1980, established the requirement to pay maintenance fees for applications filed after that date. Enactment of Public Law 96-517, in my opinion, has had the greatest negative impact on invention and innovation and is patently unconstitutional.
On the one hand, the Government grants exclusive rights for seventeen years to an invention to an inventor in exchange for publishing the invention to the whole world. On the other hand, the government takes away these Constitutionally guaranteed rights for non-payment of a "Maintenance Fee". 'This, in my opinion, is an unconstitutional taking of private property (intellectual property) without compensation.
As a Patent Attorney, filing a patent application and getting a patent issued to a client is a very rewarding and satisfying feeling. When I receive a notice from the Patent Office that one of'my patents has expired for non-payment of the maintenance fee, I am heartbroken-like losing a child which I have reared. If the Patent Office needs the additional revenue that they receive from the maintenance fees for operating costs, they must find another means which will not destroy property rights. For example, President Clinton's FY 1998 budget requested only $27 million of the $119 million which the PTO collects in the patent fee surcharge account. The remaining $92 million in patent fees enriched the general treasury. Thus, the Administration is enriching the treasury and increasing the surplus by unfairly and unconstitutionally taxing inventors and innovators.
Inventors are constantly being scammed by invention development companies who promise to market their inventions. It is also difficult to raise risk capital to develop and market inventions. It may take as long as five to seven years before an inventor can actually make a profit from the invention. They don't need the Government to take away the only protection that they may have from domestic and foreign competition. Canceling the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling the invention opens the U.S. market to foreign manufacturers such as China, Taiwan and Japan.
To further exacerbate the matter, the Patent Office has provided the Communist...Patent Office with the entire U.S. patent data base on magnetic tape. China has been violating our copyrights and counterfeiting U.S. intellectual property, thus robbing our U.S. inventors and copyright owners. Why do we continue to give this patent information to China when it is running a trade deficit of over $30 billion with the U.S.? Canceling U.S. Patent rights will exonerate. the Chinese from the charge of counterfeiting and would permit them to export infringing products to the U.S.
I am a member of the Edison Inventors Association, an organization of and for independent inventors and is based in Fort Myers. The organization seeks to stimulate innovative culture through teaching of the inventive process to people of all ages in the community and school programs. As a member, I want to express my strong opposition to the collection of maintenance fees. I expressed my views at the last meeting held on July 21, 1999 and advised the members that I was writing this letter on the subject. If you support my views on repealing Public Law 96-517, I can suggest your appearance at one of our meetings, which are held on the third Wednesday of each month, at the Edison museum in Fort Myers.
Our country has a proud tradition of fostering inventions going back to framing of our Constitution which enabled Congress to pass laws in 1790 granting rights to inventors (Article 1, Section 8). This creativity has been a principal foundation of our economic strength. One cannot even begin to estimate how many jobs and how much wealth are derivative from the invention of one man, Thomas Alva Edison, whose name our association carries. One major difference between Thomas Edison and our members is that he did not have to worry about his 1,000+ patents expiring for non-payment of maintenance fees. Based on the current maintenance fee structure, Thomas Edison would have paid $5,750,000 in maintenance fees on 1,000 patents. How many of his inventions would have reached the marketplace if he was burdened by the payment of maintenance fees?
As you can see, I am very concerned about the unfair burden on the individual inventors. There is no political organization to look out for their interests. When Senator Dole retired, inventors and innovators lost their greatest supporter. The Bayh-Dole Bill and the Technology Transfer Act were the most significant pieces of legislation protecting inventor's rights. I testified on the Technology Transfer Act and helped develop the Defense Procurement Reform Act~
Inventors and Innovators need a new Champion. I sincerely hope that you will be the one. I am providing copies of this letter to three other potential champions, Presidential Candidate Elizabeth Dole, Senator Orrin Hatch, and Congressman John Kasich for their support.
I will be in Orlando from August 15-17 and would like to meet with you or one of your staff to further discuss this issue.
Sincerely,
Frank A. Lukasik
COPIES: Elizabeth Dole; Senator Orrin Hatch; Congressman John Kasich |
