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I like the conclusion of the article, which is that concentrating all patent cases into a single court has given that one court too much power. That particular court seems heavily pro-business right now. The legal system works better when appeals court judges across the country make decisions, and the supreme court manages the splits.The author of the original article probably doesn't remember the days before the Federal Circuit was created. Except for the then-rare cases when the Supreme Court intervened, judicial interpretations and applications of patent law could vary widely among the different courts. The validity of a patent often depended heavily on where the lawsuit was filed. Some courts were known as graveyards for otherwise-good patents. The federal district court in Minnesota was one such place, along with its appellate court the Eighth Circuit.
That often led to patent owners and accused infringers racing to get their lawsuits filed first: A patent owner would try to sue the accused infringer first in a patent-friendly court, while the accused infringer would try to sue the patent owner first in, say Minnesota, asking for a "declaratory judgment" of invalidity and non-infringement. Under the procedural rules, usually whoever won the race to the courthouse got to keep their lawsuit alive, while the second-place filer would have their lawsuit dismissed.
That in turn led to great uncertainty in the scope, validity, and value of a patent. Clients hate uncertainty. That's what led to the creation of the Federal Circuit: To try to bring more uniformity to the judicial interpretations and applications of patent law.