The recent enactment of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) demonstrates congressional interest in the patent system. Most of the provisions of the AIA apply to any type of patented invention. For example, the first-inventor-to-file priority system, prior user rights, and post-grant and inter partes review proceedings apply equally to chemical compounds, electrical appliances, mechanical devices, and any other invention that may be protected by a patent. However, other AIA provisions are specific to particular types of inventions. That statute limited the availability of patents on tax strategies, prohibits the issuance of patents claiming human organisms, and creates "transitional proceedings" that apply exclusively to patents pertaining to business methods. The AIA also allows "prioritization of examination of applications for products, processes, or technologies that are important to the national economy or national competitiveness...." The AIA reflects the principle that, for the most part, the U.S. patent system operates in a uniform manner. All patentable inventions are generally subject to the same statutory provisions. A number of exceptions exist to this concept of technological neutrality, however. For example, statutory provisions limit the enforceability of patents claiming methods of medical treatment; call for patent term extension for certain products regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA); and establish specialized patents for designs and plants. This blended architecture has for many years prompted inquiry into whether the patent system operates best as a uniform system that applies neutrally to all inventions, or whether it could or should be tailored to meet the specific needs of different industries. Commentators have proposed, for example, that software patents should receive shorter terms than patents on other inventions, and that patents on genes should be subject to compulsory licenses that allow individuals to use the patented technology upon paying a license fee. Unenacted legislation in the 112 th Congress, H.R. 6245 , proposed patent litigation reforms that would apply to patents claiming computer software and hardware, but not to other sorts of inventions. Notably, U.S. membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) may influence congressional willingness to promulgate industry-specific patent statutes. One component of the WTO agreements, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement), requires patents to be available and enforceable "without discrimination as to ... the field of technology.... " Although the TRIPS Agreement allows for some limited exceptions to this rule of technological neutrality, one consequence of U.S. membership in the WTO may be a restricted ability to tailor the patent statute to particular inventions and industries. This report considers the possibility of modifying the U.S. patent system to meet the needs of specific industries. After providing a brief review of the patent system, the report identifies different industrial traits, such as the pace of innovation, product cycle, and the cost of research and development, which potentially suggest the desirability of tailored patent rights. It then considers possible points of adjustment within the patent system, including patent term, scope of exclusive rights, and the availability of remedies for infringement. The report then discusses potential difficulties associated with distinguishing among industries within the patent system, including the provisions of the TRIPS Agreement. The report closes with concluding observations. The patent system covers a broad variety of inventions. U.S. patents cover traditional subject matter such as machines, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing processes, along with high-tech inventions in the fields of biotechnology, computer software, and nanotechnology. No matter what the sort of technology, however, the patent system in large measure operates under the same general principles. In particular, all inventors who wish to obtain patent rights must file an application at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). USPTO examiners then review the application to ensure that certain statutory requirements are met. These statutory requirements—including that the invention be adequately described in the patent application, and that the invention must not have been obvious to a skilled artisan —apply to every invention for which a patent is sought. Similarly, once a patent has issued, the statutory term is set uniformly to 20 years from the date of filing no matter what the type of invention. All patents received the identical exclusive rights—namely, the right to prevent others from making, using, selling, offering to sell, or importing the patented invention in the United States. Some exceptions exist to this general notion of standardization. The United States has long provided for the protection of industrial designs through so-called "design patents." The Patent Law Treaties Implementation Act of 2012, P.L. 112-211 , recently caused U.S. law to conform to the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs, the leading international agreement on these specialized rights. The United States also established two sorts of intellectual property rights for plants: plant patents, which are administered by the USPTO; and plant variety protection certificates, which are administered by the Department of Agriculture. In addition, the Hatch-Waxman Act extends the terms of patents covering pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and other products which are subject to premarketing approval by the FDA. As well, over the years private legislation has increased the terms of a number of particular patents. Further, some commentators observe that the statutory provisions for patents are stated fairly generally. In their view, these broad parameters provide courts and the USPTO with some ability to recognize the diverse characteristics of distinct technologies and tailor their rulings accordingly. For example, one core patentability requirement is that the invention must not have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art. The courts have arguably developed nuanced obviousness principles that take into account whether the invention falls within a predictable art, including many mechanical and electrical inventions, as compared to a less predictable art, such as some branches of chemistry and biotechnology. Inventions within these latter, less predictable arts may possibly be more readily able to satisfy the obviousness requirement and therefore are more likely to be patented. Despite these exceptions, the Patent Act of 1952, as amended by such legislation as the American Inventors Protection Act and AIA, is generally worded in a neutral fashion. The uniform treatment provided by the patent system may be contrasted with the diversity of the technologies and industries to which patents pertain, however, a topic this report takes up next. Commentators have for many years recognized that technologies and industries vary in ways that are salient to the patent system. In particular, the costs and risks of conducting R&D differ widely among industries. Arguably the patent incentive should be greater for innovative efforts that are expensive and more likely to fail. Similarly, some sectors are marked by stand-alone, discrete advances, while others feature steady, cumulative innovation. Firms that operate within the latter sorts of industries may have greater need to access technologies invented and patented by others. As well, product cycles also vary markedly across the U.S. economy. For example, patients may use a particular pharmaceutical for decades, even as consumers quickly discard their old mobile telephones and other electronics in favor of new devices. Industries with compact product cycles may be better served by short application pendency periods at the USPTO and also may be less concerned with lengthy terms of patent protection. Still another factor may be the practical availability of trade secret protection. Competitors may readily reverse engineer many electrical and mechanical products, for example. Firms within these industries must therefore seek patent rights or enjoy no effective intellectual property rights whatsoever. On the other hand, certain chemical and biotechnology inventions may be more plausibly maintained as trade secrets. Arguably greater encouragement is needed for public disclosure of chemical and biological inventions through the patent system. The number of patents that cover a particular product also varies widely among industry. Within the pharmaceutical industry, often only a handful, and sometimes only one or two patents cover an individual drug. In contrast, numerous patents may cover a particular electronics product. As RPX Corporation, a self-described "comprehensive patent risk management firm," explains: Modern products and services incorporate numerous technology components. The evolution of mobile devices provides an example. Based on our research, we believe there are more than 250,000 active patents relevant to today's smartphones, a significant increase compared to our estimate of approximately 70,000 patents that were active and relevant to mobile phones in 2000. This growth can be attributed to the expanded set of features and functionality incorporated in today's smartphones, including touchscreens, internet access, streaming video, media playback, application store readiness and other web-based services, and WiFi connectivity options. These "vast disparities in patent-to-product" ratios may influence the perceptions of different business enterprises over the value of individual patents as compared to larger portfolios of intellectual property rights. Another arguable distinction among industries is the detectability of patents that are pertinent to particular products. Fields such as small-molecule chemistry employ an internationally recognized, standardized nomenclature to identify the composition of a particular compound. As a result, firms within the agricultural, industrial, and pharmaceutical chemical industries may enjoy some confidence that they will be able to identify patents that are relevant to products they wish to sell. In contrast, fields such as software arguably have yet to develop a standardized terminology for identifying programs, procedures, algorithms, and other sorts of machine instructions. The lack of conventions for identifying software inventions potentially impacts the patent system, arguably making the identification of pertinent patents difficult for firms in the computer industry. In view of these and possibly other distinctions between technologies and markets, policy makers may not be particularly confident that a one-size-fits-all patent system ideally encourages innovation throughout a diverse array of industries. Observers have for many years suggested that the statute distinguish among the varying inventions and industries for which patents are available. In theory, many aspects of the patent system could be tailored to reflect the needs of distinct technology sectors.