Econoblogger Brad DeLong, having read my contribution to Cato’s symposium on growth, asks a question:
The entertainment industry likes copyrights. But the high-tech industry does not like patent trolls. I can understand–given the Democratic Party’s dependence for its elite fund-raising on Hollywood, the trial lawyers, the traditionally-Jewish investment banks, and Silicon Valley–why causes like copyright reform and tort reform have so little traction within the set of Democratic office-holders. But what, in your view, has gone wrong with patent reform? Why hasn’t patent reform low-hanging bipartisan fruit?
My sense is that patent reform is attracting more bipartisan support as the evidence of the positive effect it could have mounts. Tim Lee has reported that trial lawyers managed to get Senate Democrats to kill a patent-reform bill this year because it included loser-pays provisions. Those provisions would not have affected most trial lawyers but, from their perspective, would have set a bad precedent. Other Democrats favor reform, including President Obama, so next year maybe some of that fruit could be picked.