2,000-member group calls on House leadership to withdraw unconstitutional bill
Today, the U.S. Business and Industry Council (USBIC), a 2,000-member organization of small manufacturers and small-entity inventors, wrote to Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to request that House Resolution 1249 not be brought to the floor of the House of Representatives for a vote.
"H.R. 1249 is rife with constitutional and other serious problems and should be pulled from floor consideration at this time," said Kevin L. Kearns, president of the USBIC. "It would be wrong for the House leadership and the White House to try to arrange a backroom deal to address all the serious constitutional deficiencies. More input from small businesses, universities, venture capitalists, and other stakeholders is necessary."
The USBIC supports the positions taken by the following:
- Reps. Harold Rogers (R-KY), chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, and Paul Ryan (R-WI), chairman of the House Committee on the Budget, in their letter to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary. According to this letter, the shift of fee-setting and spending authority to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office without any further Congressional action or oversight is an unconstitutional delegation of Congress's spending authority.
- Reps. Harold Rogers (R-KY) and Norm Dicks (D-WA), the chairman and ranking member of the House Committee on Appropriations, joined by Reps. Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Chaka Fattah (D-PA), the chairman and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, in a letter to Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), House majority leader.
- The Heritage Foundation, in its report on the unconstitutionality of Section 22 of H.R. 1249.
"Now that the bill is close to final passage, members of Congress and outside organizations are beginning to do their due diligence and are realizing that the bill flouts the Constitution," said Kearns. "H.R. 1249's unconstitutional provisions include Section 2, which changes the United States from its historical first-to-invent system to a European first-to-file system; Section 18, which allows a review of previously issued and re-examined business-method patents; and Section 22, which delegates Congress's appropriations authority to the executive branch."
"The bill does not hang together without the unconstitutional Section 22 because it would place substantial new responsibilities on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office without providing the resources to undertake them," Kearns continued. "The 21st Century Coalition for Patent Fairness, a misnomer for some of the proponents of H.R. 1249, seems to have forgotten that the Constitution gives the power of appropriations to Congress, not to the executive branch. Led by multinational corporations, the Coalition has informed Speaker Boehner and Leader Pelosi in a letter this week that they intend to hold Section 22 hostage so as to pass this special-interest version of patent 'reform.' The group's constitutional judgment is wrong, as is its political judgment."
"We ask Speaker Boehner to derail this runaway big-bank, big-tech, and big-multinational patent 'reform' locomotive before it does irreparable harm to the Constitution, legislative process, and America's small entity innovators, the main source of job creation in our economy," said Kearns. "First and foremost, we need to fix the many significant problems at the patent office—which has over 700,000 unexamined patent applications—but not at the expense of the Constitution. Congress has shirked it duties to the patent office for years. Let's put aside this defective bill, and, once the patent office is fixed, Congress can see if further patent reforms are both necessary and of benefit to all of the stakeholders in our innovation economy."
About the USBIC
Founded in 1933, the U.S. Business and Industry Council (USBIC) is a national organization of business owners and executives dedicated to making the U.S. domestic economy the world's leading engine of economic growth. Member companies are typically family-owned or privately held, mostly in the manufacturing sector. They are often the major employers in their home communities and the mainstays of the local economy. This membership composition has given the USBIC an outlook on issues more rooted in mainstream America than other national business groups, which are dominated by giant multinational corporations with global agendas and dwindling national loyalties. For more information, see www.americaneconomicalert.org and www.noonhr1249.org.
Contacts:
U.S. Business and Industry Council
Kevin L. Kearns, 202-266-3980
kearns@usbusiness.org