Fred Thompson - A Tale of Politcial Courage

An excellent account of Fred Thompson standing up to: "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". Remarkable.

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.

[The Rest of the Story]

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.

Courtesy of Paul R. Hollrah of The Conservative Voice

Hat Tip to 'Oldfox' On DraftFredThompson.com