The PTO and the Market for Influence in Patent Law

Long examines some of the ways in which the PTO has maneuvered since the early 1990s to occupy a more central position in making patent law and policy. She tells a slightly different story from the one often told, in which regulatory agencies are passive targets of attempts at capture by their constituencies. Whereas the literature on the origin of attempts to influence the regulatory process focuses mostly on the demand side, Long focuses on the supply side. One of the weaknesses of the capture theory as it is often presented is that it assumes that only the regulated constituency takes the initiative. This implies that interest groups are the instigators of attempts at regulatory entanglement, an assumption that is questionable in the case of the PTO. She argues that while they often think of agency entanglement with the community it is supposed to regulate as an unalloyed bad, there have been some positive results from the PTO's attempts to increase its influence. Whether this state of affairs will continue, however, remains to be seen.