Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few

by Robert B. Reich

said patents could be obtained for “any useful art, manufacture, engine, machine, or device, or any improvement thereon not before known or used,” and its duration would be fourteen years. Since then, Congress has extended patent protection to twenty years (for applications filed after 1995), but the real battles have been over what is “new and useful.” The Patent and Trademark Office makes these determinations on a case-by-case basis; another office handles copyrights on literary works. Those who disagree with Patent Office decisions can appeal them to a special court set up for the purpose and take their cases all the way to the Supreme Court if the court is willing to hear them. As inventions have become ever more complex, patent litigation—typically legal fights between those who are granted patents and competitors who believe the patents unjustifiably infringe on patents they already own, or who believe no patent should have been awarded—has increased in volume and duration. By the second decade of the