feiture specialist. And it troubles me that if we are having a decline, maybe we do not need high-paid forfeiture specialists if they are not carrying on a basic level of work. So just from a management point of view, I would hope that you would look at that and encourage and promote that.

Do you, personally-how do you feel about that? Do you, personally, feel that the Marshal Service should be active in partnering with State and local law enforcement in forfeiture of assets?

Mr. MARSHALL. Having spent 14 years with the Virginia State Police, yes, sir, Senator. I am very supportive of that. And it is one of the tasks that I enjoy doing, is when we have an equitable sharing check to be able to sign that check and take part in the presentation of it. Partnership is crucial in law enforcement throughout the country.

Senator SESSIONS. I think a lot of people start theorizing about forfeiture, and they do not understand the reality. These are ill-gotten gains that the criminal should not be able to keep, and it is a practical partnership, teamwork effort, State and Federal, and I can tell that you understand that.

Mr. MARSHALL. Thank you.

Senator SESSIONS. And I know you will do well at that.

On the question of patents, Mr. Dickinson, what is the status of the patent building that is being talked about?

Mr. DICKINSON. The building, Senator?

Senator SESSIONS. Yes, the new building.

Mr. DICKINSON. About 12 months ago, the GSA announced that they have completed the process of evaluation of final bids. They have announced which of the final bids they were prepared to award the lease to. That is a company called Elcor, Inc., and the site which they proposed, which GSA proposed to build it on is in Alexandria, about 3 miles down the road from where we are now, the so-called Carlisle site right near the King Street Metro stop.

There is some ongoing litigation at the moment. Our landlord is concerned about us moving out of our current facility, as you can imagine, and he has brought several actions in Federal court to have the courts take a look at that. We have won one of those, and the other one is pending now in the District Court for the District of Columbia, and the judge has that under consideration now with regards obligations under NEPA.

Senator SESSIONS. What is the latest cost of this new building, projected cost?

Mr. DICKINSON. The developer and GSA, to my understanding, has not projected an actual cost for the building itself. We will be leasing the building, so there has not been a final cost estimate for the actual building itself. The committee that reviewed this from GSA reported back to me, and we were very pleased by this, that the winning bid will allow us to pay less in rent per square foot than we currently pay. So that's something that we're very pleased with. We are, hopefully, saving a few dollars.

Senator SESSIONS. Is that the total for the whole total cost?
Mr. DICKINSON. That is my understanding, yes.

Senator SESSIONS. Including the parking area and all of that? Mr. DICKINSON. They charge us rent for all of the parking and all of the office space, yes, Senator.

Senator SESSIONS. Well, the numbers that I saw when I was on the Public Works Committee for the patent building were shocking, I thought, and I had serious doubts about whether we had to have a new one. I do not know where you are now in that process. But I was concerned about it.

Let me ask one thing, and, Mr. Chairman, I will finish. You said, I believe, in remarks on Tokyo, about-you said, in response to the first question,

Most would state that there should be a global patent in 2010. All of us can list the probable benefits of a global patent system. I'm sure that we would all believe that such a system would reduce costs for inventors and make it dramatically simpler to obtain protection and would provide uniformity of protection in the world.

I think you mentioned that later in another address, maybe previously through the International Patent Society in September 1998 you say, “A global patent system is, in principle, a very worthy goal."

Is it your position we need a global patent system?

Mr. DICKINSON. I think that, yes, it is definitely my position that we need one. I think we need to move towards, particularly today, when the Internet and other-and the globalization of the economy leads to a situation where inventors, small and large, and particularly small inventors, independent inventors, are much more susceptible to infringement and much less likely to be able to have remedies because of the cost of the current system worldwide. I think it is very important that we move in that direction.

There is not a consensus yet in the world of how to do this. There are a number of suggestions. Do we have one patent organization that issues patents? Do we give full faith and credit to other's patents? Do we validate the work of other offices? There are a lot of suggestions that have been laid out, and we need to work towards finding an international consensus. But there is a consensus that we need to have broader international protection and move away from the cost associated, in particular, with having a series of national protections today.

Senator SESSIONS. Are you aware that there are perils in that, in that high-tech patent items you can lose control of them, that other nations who would have access to that could, in fact, cause a company to lose their patent protections that have been preserved pretty well in our current system? And is it not a fact that there are a number of nations who steadfastly like to counterfeit and compete in violation of American patents?

Mr. DICKINSON. Enforcement is one of the biggest challenges we face worldwide. I think that is also why having the TRIPS agreement in place as part of GATT is also extremely beneficial to this. This would require countries who want to be part of the WTO to have a minimal threshold level of intellectual property in their own country. And I think that is one of the key ways we can get at this enforcement problem worldwide. But you have definitely put your finger on one of the key issues.

Senator SESSIONS. There was, apparently, one article that we came in 1996, Mr. Lehman, who was serving at the time as U.S.

Commissioner of Patents, sought to give Beijing CD-ROM's containing the entire patent database of 160 years. Are you familiar with that?

Mr. DICKINSON. I am, indeed.

Senator SESSIONS. It came out in the Cox report.

Mr. DICKINSON. Indeed.

Senator SESSIONS. Do you agree that that was a wise thing?

Mr. DICKINSON. We are not-we at this time are not going to give those-the Congress has forbidden us from giving the CD's or the bulk tapes of our patent database to the Chinese government. Senator SESSIONS. Do you think that was a wise idea for him to give away this information, database?

Mr. DICKINSON. Well, it is not my-it is probably not best for me to criticize or comment on my predecessor in that way. This is publicly available information. But I think that the Congress has expressed their concern about it, and we are following their direction. Senator SESSIONS. It affects me a little bit in how I vote for a man in the Patent Office and how you react to that. To me, that was a very unwise thing. There may be other opportunities of areas in which the law is somewhat unclear, and I would like to know whether the extent to which you are so committed to an international patent procedure that you would consider that a wise act as a patent commissioner to give up this information.

Would you tell us how you would personally feel about it?

Mr. DICKINSON. Mr. Senator, that information is publicly available. If someone wanted to come to the office and buy hard copies of all of our patents, they could do that today. That is one of our goals, is to make the dissemination of our information as widely available as possible.

We understand the concerns with regard to the specific situation in China. I think one of our bigger opportunities is to work with the Chinese to get their own system developed and in place. They have a good patent system. They have a fairly difficult and a system we work with regularly of enforcement. It is not nearly as good as we would like in China, and we work with them on a regular basis.

Senator SESSIONS. Well, it is important.

Mr. Chairman, thank you. We do have a lot of counterfeiting of that kind of thing around the world. China has been named repeatedly as being involved in that, and I hope that we will develop a national policy which protects our legitimate interest.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Sessions.

Senator Leahy.

QUESTIONING BY SENATOR LEAHY

Senator LEAHY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Marshall--I should say Marshal Marshall-you probably get tired of hearing that, but I am delighted to see you here, and Jean Marie and your daughter. And, of course, I am always delighted to see your mother, who is greatly admired by all of us here.

I enjoy looking back, as I did when you became a marshal, at your background, nearly 20 years in law enforcement, going through the ranks in the Virginia State Police, and then to become

a U.S. marshal. I think, frankly, the Marshals Service is fortunate to have you nominated as Director.

I only have one question and it is just more of a philosophical one, or actually a managerial one. The U.S. Marshals Service gets involved more and more in the pursuit and apprehension of Federal fugitives even up in my State, and I wonder, are we using local police enough for that. I mean, you can only stretch yourself so thin, and I just ask you, from your own experience as U.S. Marshal in Virginia, but also before that in the Virginia State Police, do you think the Marshals Service could use local authorities more in the pursuit of Federal fugitives?

Mr. MARSHALL. Definitely, Senator. I think the task force approach is the way to go. In Eastern Virginia, for the last 2 years, for 3-month periods we conducted a joint task force in the city of Richmond with terrific results. It is definitely-the task force approach as far as fugitive apprehension is the way to go, and certainly we depend on the State and the locals to help us in our investigations and we are more than happy to help them with theirs. Senator LEAHY. Mr. Dickinson, we were talking about patents all being on CD-ROM's. Are those available for other people, the past-I mean, basically, the archives of the Patents and Trademarks, is that on CD-ROM now?

Mr. DICKINSON. Yes, it is.

Senator LEAHY. And who can have that? I mean, could Senator Hatch walk over and buy a copy of those, as Hatch Enterprises? Mr. DICKINSON. If he had about $250,000, he could indeed walk over. The only-again, the only entity that we are prohibited from selling it to is the Chinese government.

Senator LEAHY. So if Singapore bought it and then transferred it to China, I mean they could buy it. Once they bought it, it could go to anybody?

Mr. DICKINSON. Patent data has traditionally been publicly available. That is part of the theory behind the system is to make thethat is actually the basis of the patent system, is to make the invention public so that others can build on it and improve it and move technology forward.

Senator LEAHY. Well, of course, that is the reason for my question. I mean, somebody could go over there with a pencil and paper-and, of course, it would take forever to do it, but could sit down there and literally just copy all these things that are in the public record. Is that correct?

Mr. DICKINSON. That is true.

Senator LEAHY. Whether they are from the Chinese embassy or from the University of Vermont?

Mr. DICKINSON. That is true.

Senator LEAHY. I just didn't want anybody to think that we are suddenly giving out some amazing thing that is not available to any Chinese scholar or British scholar or German scholar or anybody else who might come here.

What I do worry about is when other nations fail to protect the patents, trademarks, and copyrights of American owners. And I would ask you, if confirmed, that you be very, very aggressive in helping to protect us. Our intellectual property in this country is one of our most valuable assets. It is certainly one of our most val

uable export assets. It helps us get the support for our schools, the educational system, everything, plus the millions of jobs it creates. If it is not respected in a world where international commerce is the rule of the day, then we lose all that. So I would urge you to be extremely aggressive in helping to protect that.

Mr. DICKINSON. I will.

Senator LEAHY. Mr. Chairman, I know all the questions have been asked. I think Mr. Dickinson is extremely well-qualified from having read his background. And, of course, John Marshall is somebody I have known and watched, and we have had the privilege of working with his brother in earlier days on this committee before he threw us overboard for another part of the Federal Government. I would hope that both of them would be confirmed quickly.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you.

We appreciate both of you being here. With that, I think we will just end this hearing. I think you both have acquitted yourselves well, and we will look forward to trying to get you confirmed.

So, with that, we will adjourn until further notice. Thank you for being here.

[The questionnaires of Messrs. Marshall and Dickinson are retained in the Committee files.]

[Whereupon, at 10:36 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]