by Judge Paul R. Michel | United States Court of Appeals

Apple, Google, Cisco, and Intel recently suffered a major legal defeat. Their loss is America's gain.

In November, a district court judge in Northern California dismissed a lawsuit those firms had filed against the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. They were trying to strip away USPTO's discretionary authority to consider - or not consider - a certain type of patent challenge.

The Big Tech firms are appealing this ruling, but they face long odds in the circuit courts and Supreme Court. So they're pursuing a parallel attack, with the help of their allies in Congress. Tech lobbyists are urging legislators to revamp a decade-old bipartisan law to weaken the USPTO - and the patent protections that undergird the American economy.