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158 U. Pa. L. Rev. PENNumbra 1 (2009-2010)

handle is hein.journals/pennumbra158 and id is 1 raw text is: RESPONSE THE PTO'S FUTURE: REFORM OR ABOLITION? JONATHAN S. MASUR' In response to Michael Abramowicz & John F. Duffy, Ending the Patent- ing Monopoly, 157 U. PA. L. REV. 1541 (2009); Clarisa Long, The PTO and the Market for Influence in Patent Law, 157 U. PA. L. REV. 1965 (2009); Adam Mossoff, The Use and Abuse of IP at the Birth of the Admin- istrative State, 157 U. PA. L. REV. 2001 (2009); Arti K Rai, Growing Pains in the Administrative State: The Patent Office's Troubled Quest for Mana- gerial Control, 157 U. PA. L. REV. 2051 (2009). In their four contributions to the Symposium on the Foundations of Intellectual Property Reform, Michael Abramowicz and John Duffy, Clarisa Long, Arti Rai, and Adam Mossoff offer a series of compelling and thought-provoking portraits of the administrative institutions charged with implementing patent law. In some respects their con- ceptions of patent law's administrative state are in accord; in others they differ wildly and lead to contradictory conclusions. In the brief commentary that follows, I examine and interrogate the central claims made by each of these authors and explore the ramifications of their variant theories. I. PRIVATIZING THE PTO In their well-conceived and thoughtful paper, Michael Abramo- wicz and John Duffy propose replacing the U.S. Patent and Trade- mark Office's (PTO) current monopoly on patent examination with a t Assistant Professor, University of Chicago Law School. I thank Michael Abramo- wicz, Clarisa Long, Adam Mossoff, and Arti Rai for helpful comments, and Faye Paul for excellent research assistance.