Senate Bill S.515 would harm small, innovative businesses

For years the large banks that helped create the recent economic crisis have been trying to weaken the patent rights of individual inventors and small companies by attempting to persuade Congress to pass misguided patent "reform" legislation. These banks have teamed up with large monopolistic computer-Internet companies (like Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon.com) in the special interest lobbying group, the so-called Coalition for Patent Fairness (CPF). CPF companies were once small themselves and these banks are profiting from government bailouts. CPF companies and these banks are making huge profits despite our country’s general economic distress. Yet they still want to deprive smaller companies of their property (patent rights) for even further economic advantage.

U.S. Senate Bill S.515 is the latest misguided CPF legislative effort masquerading as "reform" and "fairness." S.515 is opposed locally by the Montana Bioscience Alliance, Montana’s only statewide organization of small technologically innovative companies, such as LigoCyte, Bacterin, SGM Biotech and many others. S.515 is opposed nationally by the Small Business Coalition on Patent Legislation and by the IEEE-USA. The Small Business Coalition includes the National Small Business Association and many other small business organizations. The IEEE-USA is this nation’s largest engineering society. All these opponents of S.515 say the bill would have major adverse effects on smaller companies and jobs.

We need small innovative companies more than ever to create jobs, a new green energy independent economy and solutions to major technological problems. Montanans have a significant advantage over citizens of more populated states crippled by special interests. We can have a significant positive effect on our future by opposing S.515. You need not become an expert on the legislation. You need only contact both Sens. Tester (586-4450) and Baucus (586-6104) and request that they protect the patent rights of individual inventors and small businesses.

Robert McGinnis, MD, MSEE, Bozeman

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Small Business Coalition on Patent Legislation opposition see the Press Release at
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Small-Business-Coalition-on-Patent-Legislation-Established-Oppose-Proposals-That-Would-1091326.htm
and letter to the U.S. Small Business Administration at

http://www.connect.org/news/pdf/Coalition-Letter-to-SBA-Dec-15-09.pdf

National Small Business Association link at http://www.nsba.biz/content/2897.shtml . They say there: "Perhaps most troubling, however, is the fact that the legislation continues to propose a conversion to a first-to-file system, but lacks any analysis of how this conversion would affect innovative small firms and independent inventors. This is no small matter. "

On the IEEE-USA opposition see the letter at this link http://www.ieeeusa.org/policy/policy/2010/020110.pdf

The IEEE-USA is the country’s largest professional engineering society and “represents more than 210,000 engineers, scientists and allied professionals.” More specifically in the Feb. 1, 2010 letter to the Senate Leadership (and others) the IEEE states: “Our primary concerns with S. 515’s proposed legislation are that the bill abandons the 200 year-old proven First-to-Invent law and adopts a First-to-File law, and does not address the funding and operational issues within the PTO that are affecting the cost, quality and latency of patents.”

The letter also talks about the importance of patent protection system to job creation and the deleterious effects that the present version of S.515 may have on such job creation. “Our members working for large and small companies, or as individual inventors or entrepreneurs, depend on the American patent system. Small-sized businesses and startup companies rely more heavily on patent protection and have been the source of most new domestic engineering jobs.”