Some parts of his speech I found most interesting:<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Thomas Jefferson correctly stated, patents are “not [a] natural right, but [are] for the benefit of

society.”3 Our patent system is an economic tool to coordinate technological development that is

designed to ensure inventive effort is adequately rewarded and quickly adopted to benefit the

American people. Thus, when a patentee does not deliver her invention to the public, she should

not be allowed to stand in the way of others willing to do so if they can compensate her fairly for

the advance she identified. Allowing her to deny the American people a significant advance

incorrectly places her private right above the needs of the public …..

The process of discerning the precise scope of a patent's claims is known as claim construction.

There needs to be a process because patent claims almost always contain words of arguable or

ambiguous meaning. Roughly ten years ago, the courts chose to define claim construction as a

matter of law to be resolved by a trial judge and reviewed de novo on appeal.13 Unfortunately,

the Markman process has resulted in less predictability and certainty regarding a patent's scope

because, until a Markman hearing takes place, no one knows what a patent does or does not

cover.

Many patentees exploit this uncertainty by alleging their claims are extremely broad only to later

argue their patent claims are narrow when faced with a strong invalidity challenge. Since it is

possible for a court to interpret a patent's claims broadly, the public is forced to abstain from

practicing anything that could conceivably be considered covered by an unconstrued patent's

claims. If a court later interprets the claims more narrowly, than the public needlessly avoided

practicing technology that is not within the court's construction but that was within the broadest

reasonable construction of the claims.