Washington got one right for a change. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s proposed new “One Challenge” rule may finally break Big Tech’s stranglehold on innovation, revitalize our patent system, and supercharge America’s growth.

The establishment of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board was billed as a fair and expeditious means of rooting out weak patents. In practice, it became a legal meat grinder, and large corporations quickly learned how to weaponize it. Small inventors found that a successful patent defense in district court would only be followed by successive rounds of costly review. When the same patent can be attacked repeatedly, patent rights turn into revocable permissions, and only the deepest pockets survive.

The USPTO’s proposal is a long-overdue fix. Once a patent claim has run the gauntlet in court or at the PTAB and survived, its validity should be regarded as final. This simple principle restores what property is supposed to mean in a free economy. It tells investors, entrepreneurs, universities, and corporate labs that once their patent prevails, the government will not invite serial do-overs until the better-financed side wins by exhaustion.​

Reliable patent rights aren’t a legal abstraction; they are the very heart of........

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