mr. sensenbrenner: i yield to ms. lofgren. ms. lofgren: i rise in support of the sensenbrenner amendment. actually, i don't agree that first to file is unconstitutional and i in general am not opposed to the idea of first to file, but unfortunately the bill is flawed and you cannot have first to file without robust prior user rights and a broad prior user rights used in the grace period. we don't have that in this bill. and so what we will have are established businesses having to either reveal trade secrets or be held up, have to license their own trade secrets. for star scrt -- startups this is a very serious problem. coming from silicon valley, i'll tell you, i've heard from a lot of startups in the venture world that supports them that this provision is defective. there were other remedies, they were not adopted. all we can do now is to strike the first to file provision. i do that without any reluctance. it will serve our economy best and i thank the gentleman for offering his amendment. the chair: the gentleman from wisconsin

mr. sensenbrenner was chair, when mr. conyers was chair. i am distressed to report today that i cannot support this measure after working on it since 1997. not only does it violate the rules, it costs the treasury and it will disempower small innovative inventors. so this is wrong, and the amendments that could have been put in order to correct them were not permitted. i think this is really quite a shame and i would urge that the measure not be brought up. as mr. sensenbrenner suggested, it should be sent back to the judiciary committee for further work. i would yield back to mr. garamendi so he may yield to the former chairman. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from california controls the time. the gentleman from california is recognized. garegare may i inquire as to how much time i have remaining? the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from california has five minutes. garegare very good. i think i would like to now yield two minutes to mr. sensenbrenner. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from wisconsin is recognized. mr. sens

mr. sensenbrenner. the chair: the gentleman is recognized for three minutes. mr. sensenbrenner: mr. chairman, on the first day of this session, we all took an oath to preserve and protect and defend the constitution of the united states. -- against all enemies foreign and domestic. and a day or two later, for the first time in history, we read the constitution on the floor from beginning to end. we changed the rules to have a constitutional debate when the constitutionality of legislation before us was in question. and this is the first time in the history of the united states house of representatives when a question serious enough to have a constitutional debate is being debated on the floor for 20 minutes. unlike what my friend from texas, mr. smith, has said, this bill is unconstitutional. and voting for this bill will violate one's oath of office. and here is why. the intellectual property clause of the constitution gives the protection to the first to invent and what happens later in the patent office only protects that right. it doesn't denigrate the right and the right is giv

mr. sensenbrenner, two minutes. the chair: the gentleman is recognized for two minutes. mr. sensenbrenner: madam chair this manager's amendment is substantive. it contains amendments that should not be buried in a manager's amendment and shown defeated. first of all, it does maintain the fee diversion. it maintains the fee diversion because of an alleged lock box. we've heard about this before. and i have in my hand the congressional record of june 23, 2000, where the chairman at the time of the state justice commerce subcommittee stated that the fees yen rated by the patent office are not to be used by any other agency or any other purpose. they remain in that account to be used in succeeding years. we are not siphoning off patent office fees for other expenditures. well, guess what. it happened. and it's happened in the last 10 to 12 years to the tune of $1 billion and this is exactly the same promise that they're making now. fool us once, shame on them, fool us twice, shame on us. now this change relative to the reported bill, to what is in the manager's amendment, is the