"Republicans don't want software developers to have to check in with the federal government every time they get a new idea," said the senator. "We understand that the best role for government is to allow our workers to continue to create new and better products that enrich our lives - free from the federal government's heavy hand of regulation."

Call this the Gorton Principle. Whether it applies to antitrust law is subject to quibble. (The kind of antitrust action brought against Microsoft applies only to large actors in the market. Not many "software developers" are large enough to matter to the Justice Department.) But it certainly applies to an increasing range of regulation affecting software developers; namely, the regulation of software and business-method patents.

For here it really is the case that "software developers have to check in with the federal government every time they get a new idea." Under current law, they - or, more likely, their lawyers - must determine whether underpaid and overworked bureaucrats in Washington have issued a 20-year monopoly covering their "new idea." If this monopoly has been issued, then the software developer must get the lawyers to license the invention, or find a way to invent around it. And no doubt, if the developer chooses to invent around it, the lawyers will again have to review the result to assure that no infringement remains. Thus the nature of the patent cycle: a process created by lawyers that benefits only one group with any real certainty - lawyers.

Gorton's Web page doesn't directly address patent policy. It doesn't have a search function, so it's difficult to view what he thinks except as his staff wants you to see it. And under a ridiculous Senate rule, the senator is not permitted to update his page within 60 days of an election. So he may well have well-founded views about patent policy, but none easily found on his page.

But it would be odd, I should think, if Gorton was supportive of regulation designed to create monopolies that require "software developers to have to check in with the federal government every time they get a new idea." So I trust I'm being fair in invoking his name to endorse a principle that I agree is crucial and to ask, as he does, where the candidates stand on this fundamental issue affecting the future of innovation on the Net.

Supporters of software patents don't like the term "monopoly." They prefer the term "property." Priceline.com founder Jay Walker, for example, insists the debate over patents is about whether one is "for or against property." The antiproperty position had a respectable philosophical tradition, Walker allows, but the fall of the Soviet Union should have put an end to it.

Walker's rhetoric betrays a deep confusion - though no doubt a confusion created by lawyers. Patents are a form of intellectual property. "Intellectual property" sounds like "property." And "property," as any red-blooded American knows, is sacred. After all, as the patents-as-property crowd is quick to argue, the framers of our Constitution gave Congress the power to create patents, and we know that they were strong supporters of property.