Congress once again needs to correct a problem it created in the first place. But its recent attempt at a fix of the patent system is not only inadequate, but irrelevant.

Patents have long been granted to inventors by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office if their product or process is judged to be useful, novel and nonobvious. In 2011, Congress passed the America Invents Act, or AIA, which was meant to improve patent protections, but several of its provisions belie that intent. The worst of them made possible the pursuit of challenges to the validity of a patent not only in the federal courts, as was previously the case, but also via a new procedure — “inter partes” review, or IPR, by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, or PTAB, which resides within the patent office. That new venue, combined with the lowered burden of proof, has made a circus — with lawyers as the ringmasters — of the protection of intellectual property.