PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
For additional information, contact:
Stan Rodman, Executive Director
E-mail: srodman1@sbcglobal.net
DESIGN PROTECTION HEARING SHOWCASES VALUE OF COMPETITION, CHOICE FOR CONSUMERS
Automotive Body Parts Association Urges Congress to Institute Automotive Patent Repair Clause
HOUSTON — February 15, 2008 — Several national consumer groups went to bat for the motoring public on Thursday, Feb. 14, when submitting testimony before a House subcommittee on intellectual
property rights.
Representatives of The Consumer Federation of America (CFA), in conjunction with Public Citi-
zen, Consumers Union, the Center for Auto Safety and Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, told
U.S. representatives of the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property that they
were all in support of continuing 60 years of consumer choice and competition in the automobile re-
placement parts marketplace.
This is the position steadfastly taken by members of the Automotive Body Parts Association, espe-
cially after several key members were named in the ITC case whose ruling in mid-May, 2007, has ef-
fectively eliminated consumer choice for seven separate alternative parts for the 2004-2007 Ford F-150
pickup truck.
ABPA joins CFA and others in asking Congress to install an automotive design patent repair clause
into U.S. patent law to ensure consumer choice and avert a carmaker monopoly on automotive collision
parts replacement.
To thwart future competition in crash replacement parts sales, Ford has already noti that it has applied for design patents on hundreds of additional parts impacting their most popular model vehicles. Research shows that the number of design patents awarded to all of the major automobile manufacturers has skyrocketed, growing to about 20 to 25 percent of the total U.S. patents awarded to those manufacturers.
Said Stanley A. Rodman, ABPA executive director, many more new Section 337 cases by automakers, meaning increased direct and indirect costs for consumers and threatening dire consequences for an alternative aftermarket parts industry.
He added, of design patent laws in the automotive parts and service industry can be counter-productive
for consumers by ultimately robbing the consumer of choice and increasing the costs of replacement collision
parts,
In the long run, the only real protection for the consumer and for the replacement parts industry is
for the United States Congress to introduce and pass an automotive repair parts clause.
ABPA has joined a growing list of organizations such as the Consumer Federation of America,
Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety and the Center for Auto Safety, as well as other national and
regional automotive trade groups, under a Quality Parts Coalition banner which is asking Congress to
preserve choice and competition by modifying the existing law on design patents.
With more than 150 members, the Automotive Body Parts Association (ABPA) occupies more than
400 separate collision parts distribution, bumper sales, recycling facilities and manufacturing plants.
ABPA’s members are responsible for distributing more than 75 percent of independently produced af-
termarket crash replacement parts sold to the collision repair trade.
For more information about ABPA visit www.autobpa.com.
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