IN THE MAIL: James Bessen & Michael Meurer’s Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk. Personally, I think that the patent system has fallen far, far away from its original purpose of promoting “progress in science and the useful arts,” and become largely another case of special-interest legislation and generalized rent-seeking. This is something that Rob Merges and I wrote about a while back.