[WhitneyLand]

Can we ever fix this system and get a better balance of rewarding innovation vs. accepting patent abuse?

How about this for a litmus test. Present a problem to new 4 year college graduates that they haven't heard the answer before. If x% of come back with a solution, that solution is obvious enough to be consider invalidating the patent.

Or let validity be judged by independent groups of practioners who weigh the novelty and also the impediment of a patent to world progress.

As those who've written patents already know, they are not even decent scientific or technical documentation. They're mostly a bunch of jargon and phrases meant to tic off legal checkboxes. No one would ever write a document that way if the sole purpose was to explain something.