Public choice economics warns of regulatory capture - a scenario in which the regulated actors use lobbying to get favorable rules and regulators. When an industry writes its own rules, the rest of us may suffer, and Eli Dourado argues that that’s exactly what has happened in U.S. patent policy. Here, he tells the story of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which for the last three decades has had exclusive appellate jurisdiction over patents. The Federal Circuit has tightened the law again and again, in what Dourado identifies as a classic case of regulatory capture.

B. Zorina Khan challenges Eli Dourado’s story of regulatory capture: The substantial growth of patent issuance in recent years is due overwhelmingly to an influx of foreign inventors, not to a flawed U.S. patent system. That system is neither broken nor even very different from its historical norms. Throughout our history, it has served us well, even if outsiders sometimes find it hard to understand. We should therefore resist any sweeping changes to it.

John F. Duffy likens software patents to medical patents. At one time, medical patents were considered unethical, but nowadays, they are considered an important tool for spurring innovation in a field that otherwise might not get much of it. Software patents are very similar, he argues, and they should not be abolished. Yet some reforms in the patent system make sense to him, including ending the complete centralization of patent cases in the Federal Circuit. Duffy takes issue with several of the empirical studies that lead essayist Eli Dourado uses to make the case for software patent abolition - these, he contents, do not show that total abolition would yield good outcomes. He suggests some reforms that this evidence may support instead.

Christina Mulligan tackles the problem of patents and innovation by looking at two different philosophies of law: In one approach, rules predominate. Rules are clear, simple, and easily enforced, but they may over- or underinclude problematic behaviors. In the other approach, standards predominate: Standards express in much more detail what constitutes good and bad behavior, but applying them can be costly for everyone involved. The choice between these two philosophies of law will always to some degree depend on the situation at hand. In this case, she favors a rule, which would be to end software patents. The costs of forming standards here are simply too high, she argues.