Hatch-Waxman either spills over to climate tech, or breaks the uniformity of patent law, which dooms regulatory effectiveness.

Why then does patent law widely rely on uniformity? One of the reasons lies in the nature of technology. It changes and evolves rapidly so that today's technology can be already outdated tomorrow. 17 Innovation is not static but inherently dynamic. Think about technological relics such as Walkmans, cassette tapes, VHS or floppy disks. Widespread Congress-made industry-specific law would require an enormous amount of financial and personnel resources. A further peril of industry-specific law-making is that it can encourage rentseeking and opportunistic behavior by certain industry groups." In this regard, it has been pointed out that Congressional lobbying has increased in the field of intellectual property rights. 19 Finally, there is the TRIPs Agreement that provides an additional reason for the limited existence of diversity in today's patent law. Article 27(1) of the TRIPs Agreement provides:

[P]atents shall be available for any inventions, whether products or processes, in all fields of technology, provided that they are new, involve an inventive step and are capable of industrial application. Subject to [the transitional provisions relating to developing countries and patent protection for pharmaceutical and agricultural products], patents shall be available and patent rights enjoyable without discrimination as to the place of invention, the field of technology and whether products are imported or locally produced.

TRIPs: Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Apr. 15, 1994, Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization, Annex IC, 1869 U.N.T.S. 299, 33 I.L.M. 1197 (1994) [hereinafter TRIPs Agreement] (emphasis added).20