The counterplan solves best, avoids the federalism DA, fixes the patent system, and solves certainty

In the area of patent law, Congress has sole authority to legislate.50 During the very first session of Congress, the patent statute was enacted.51 Congress subsequently amended the statute to develop a body of law relevant to changes in technology and the economy. 52 Everyone looks to Congress for patent-law reform. 53 All the normative reform efforts are continually displayed within the halls of Congress and are confined largely within the Beltway. 54 Lobbyists and interest groups exert influence in shaping patent reform.55 All efforts seem to ignore an ongoing movement at the local level, away from the national epicenter of action, to reform how patent litigation should be changed to reflect both national and local interests in patent cases. 56 Given the languishing pace of patent-law reform in Congress and the unpredictability of the Supreme Court, the local patent-law-reform movement was ripe. 7 Furthermore, local patent reform is an example of how bottom-up reforms parallel the current trends in dynamic federalism. Constitutional law scholars have fueled much of the debate in the last two decades on federalism, examining and positing the constitutional limits of congressional authority, state and federal government relationships, and the social benefits and costs of federalism.58 While the debate is ongoing among scholars in constitutional law, scholars in other areas such as environmental law,5 9 corporate securities, 60 and immigration6 1 have turned their attention to the implications of federalism for their respective fields. In recent years, scholars have embraced a new trend of federalism, proclaiming that strict "[d]ual federalism is dead" and that neither federal nor state governing authority can be seen through a single, nonoverlapping lens.62 The new alternative to the static dual federalism is dynamic federalism, which has many other names such as "federalism" or "interactive federalism., 63 Under the new concept of federalism, scholars focus on the dynamic interaction among the states and the federal government; the competition, either confrontational or cooperative, between states and the federal government; and the overlapping of state and federal authority.6 4 The local movement, as described in this Article, drawing an analogy to dynamic federalism, challenges the normative, static thinking that anything related to patents must be left to Congress. 65 Little progress has been made, as the top-down reformers have so far raced to the top. Congress and the Supreme Court have thus far failed to solve the broken-patent problem. The local movement provides a bottom-up solution that interacts, competes, and overlaps with the top-down approach to solve parts of the broken and complex patent system. The local movement is a product of work accomplished within local laboratories in many different locales across the nation to reform patent litigation.66 The local movement demonstrates that not all patent-related issues should be at the mercy of congressional attention, languishing for years on legislation pulled and pushed by powerful interest groups. 67 The local movement embodies the spirit of cooperative reform in that it represents a system sensitive to the legitimate interests at both the local and national levels.68 Congress wanted to address problems associated with patent litigation but failed to do so during the past couple of terms. Local judges and bar associations compete with Congress by partially filling the void. The local movement reveals how local judges and bar association members, together with citizens in a locality, can bring positive results to solve problems in the patent area by delivering fair and speedy resolutions to patent disputes, reducing patent litigation costs, shortening the timetables for infringement and defense contentions, imposing "good cause" standards to justify delays in pleadings, and dismissing patent cases with prejudice if certain deadlines are missed. 69 Consequently, as more patent cases are promptly disposed of and new cases are filed in the reformed districts, local federal judges have opportunities to enhance their expertise in patent law and subsequently create new federal judicial centers for patent cases. 70 The work accomplished by the local movement does not suggest that all patent related reform should be conducted at the local level. The strict dual federalism view of either national or local authority is not always productive to patent reform. Moreover, the view that all patent-related reform should be local would be unconstitutional, as Congress has the constitutional mandate to legislate substantive patent law. 71 The local movement, however, demonstrates how changes related to an area of law-patent law specifically, which has often been deemed to be exclusively within the power of Congress--can be achieved procedurally, for example, through the creation and adoption of local patent rules at the district level.72 The local movement does not reform the substantive patent law because Congress still possesses the sole power to legislate. Undoubtedly, the Patent and Copyright Clause in the Constitution speaks for the national interest in having a national patentlaw system and vests Congress with the power and authority to govern the patent system. The local patent-reform movement's development and utilization of local patent rules does not encroach upon Congress's authority or flaunt the supremacy of substantive patent law. The local patent rules are not substantive patent law; they are procedures unique to patent cases that govern how patent cases should be managed and disposed of at the district court level. The end result is an increased access to justice, a reduction in the time to dispose of cases, a decrease in litigation costs, a creation of patent expert centers throughout the nation, and a restoration of certainty that benefits the nation as a whole.