The US Congress seems to operate on the principle that, if you ignore problems for long enough, they will cease to exist. And in the case of US patent reform – which faces a make-or-break vote in the US Senate shortly – they could just about be right.

One of the great things about mature democracies is that they do not have to wait around for politicians to solve all their predicaments. If Congress avoids a problem for long enough, the stream of commerce will erode it, and other institutions (including the courts) will chip away at it until it no longer seems quite so unmanageable. That is what has happened to the issue of excessively costly patent litigation in the US: it has by no means disappeared; but it no longer seems like something that only the politicians can fix.