By ROBERT C. POZEN

GARY LOCKE, the secretary of commerce, has urged Congress to overhaul the nation's patent law by the end of the year. Although a bill has been circulating since 2005, a fierce fight involving the high-tech and drug industries on a technical issue -- how to measure damages when a company violates a patent applying to one component of a larger product -- has kept it from reaching a vote.

The quality of American patents has been deteriorating for years; they are increasingly issued for products and processes that are not truly innovative -- things like the queuing system for Netflix, which was patented in 2003.

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