Think for a minute about how exciting the 1990s were. When, for example, have we ever before had a president whose personal life was more like an X-rated movie? When have we had a president and a First Lady who rented out bedrooms in the White House as if they were running a “hot sheet” motel… albeit for a lot more money?
When have we had a president who bombed aspirin factories with long range missiles, who took sides in an ethnic dispute and bombed the capital city of a Christian European nation, and who approved the transfer of missile guidance technology to a nation that may one day be a military adversary? And when have we had a president who sought and obtained millions of dollars in illegal political contributions from that same nation, the People’s Republic of China?
If all of those things had happened on the silver screen we would have left the theater, saying, “Thank God that could never happen in real life!” But it did. It all happened, and much more.
During 1996, the Clinton Administration agreed to give the People’s Republic of China a complete set of magnetic tapes from the U.S. Patent Office computers, containing every iota of U.S. technology registered with the patent office for the past 160 years. Word of that agreement was printed, prematurely, in an internal Commerce Department publication and the transfer of the tapes was interrupted.
The people of America would never have known how many factories were being built in remote provinces of China, employing people willing to work for two or three dollars a day, and making products that should have been manufactured by American workers.
Following that, in 1997, at the request of the Japanese government, the Clinton Administration introduced legislation in the U.S. Congress that would have destroyed the U.S. patent system.
H 400 and S 507 of the 105th Congress were designed to destroy what has been the primary engine of our economy since the earliest days of the republic, a core function of the federal government, and it was done at the behest of foreign governments.
Among other changes, H 400 and S 507 removed the patent office from the Department of Commerce and converted it into a wholly-owned corporate subsidiary of the U.S. government, controlled by a six-member board of advisors, all drawn from private industry, and all with vested interests in patent office decisions.
H 400 and S 507 authorized the patent office to borrow money, to create debt, and to retire debt through increased patent fees, a violation of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution which gives Congress the sole authority to tax.
H 400 and S 507 authorized the patent office to accept gifts, cash or in-kind, in any amount, from any source, foreign or domestic, including those with vested interests in patent office decisions.
H 400 and S 507 required the patent office to disclose every technical detail of every patent application just 18 months after filing… on average, some thirty months before inventors received patent protection. This provision would have allowed corporations, individuals, and foreign governments to steal U.S. technology without having to worry about infringement.
And finally, H 400 and S 507 established a system of patent reexaminations under which any individual or corporation, foreign or domestic, for a $2000 fee, could cause any patent to be “reexamined.” And although the patent holder would have been prohibited from selling, manufacturing, or licensing a patent while it was under reexamination, the clock would have continued to run on the seventeen year patent term. It was a license for those with enough $2,000 filing fees to force inventors to sell their intellectual properties for a fraction of their value.
If ever there was an invitation to corruption, it was the Clinton Administration’s plan for the reorganization of the U.S. Patent Office. It was pure Al Gore, right out of his “reinventing America” playbook. I know. I was one of three men hired to go to Washington in April 1997 to put an end to this treachery.
When H 400 passed the House of Representatives on a voice vote, with no member demanding a recorded vote, we knew we were in trouble. S 507 was set to be reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by unanimous consent the following week. We needed one member of the United States Senate with the courage to stand before the Committee and object to the bill.
We decided to approach Senator Fred Thompson, and when S 507 came up in committee he objected on the basis of national security. He had the courage to defy the President and Vice President, the Japanese government, the Chinese government, the Lippo Group of Indonesia, and eighty or ninety of America’s largest multinational corporations. America dodged a bullet in 1997 and Fred Thompson was the man who made it happen.