Legislators launch fight to take Patent Office off-budget

The Congressional Intellectual Property Caucus on Thursday endorsed a proposal to strip House appropriators' power to set the Patent and Trademark Office budget, vowing to make "a lot of noise" against the practice of diverting fees for patent applications to other federal programs.

Caucus co-founder Robert Wexler, R-Fla., said the group soon will urge House leaders to schedule a floor vote on a measure, H.R. 1521, that would boost patent fees but permit PTO to keep all of them. Previous Congresses have rejected similar bills, but Wexler said support is growing among both small businesses and large corporations that see a connection between permitting the patent office to keep its fees and "a pro-jobs growth policy."

"There is a growing understanding that the PTO is one of the few agencies that actually brings more money into the government than is allocated to it," he said. "It is not something that is going to be done unless there is a lot of noise made to support it."

"We create jobs with technology, and this is the single biggest investment" in doing that, added Jay Inslee, D-Wash. "The whole House needs to seize this destiny, even if a particular committee does not like this issue."

Inslee said the public "would be enraged if they knew that the U.S. Congress is throwing sand in the gears of technological progress-as they are" by diverting fees. "It is a national embarrassment."

In a Sept. 25 letter to PTO Director James Rogan, Virginia Republican Frank Wolf, chairman of the House Commerce, Justice, State and the Judiciary Appropriations Subcommittee chastised the office for "contacting technology companies and [urging] these company representatives to lobby the Congress to take the [patent office] outside the federal budget process."

"There is no reason why the patent office needs to be treated better than veterans' medical care, the Environmental Protection Agency, special education" or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, all of which fall under the normal budget process said John Scofield, communications director of the Appropriations Committee.

"Just because an agency brings in revenue doesn't mean you break the piggy bank and put [that] revenue back in the agency," he said; otherwise, the Internal Revenue Service, which collects federal taxes, would be the most lavishly funded agency of government.

But industry officials like David Peyton, technology policy director of the National Association of Manufacturers, said officials "need to get beyond the annual cash-cow treatment and resulting damage control at the PTO."

A PTO spokeswoman said Rogan is still preparing a reply to Wolf's letter, even though Wolf requested a reply by Oct. 3.

"Our position over the long term is that we would like to move to a fully funded situation where all the fees go to the patent office," said Theodore Kassinger, general counsel of the Commerce Department, which supervises PTO. "But we realize that it can't happen overnight."