[SwellJoe]

Only patent trolls would crash, which is almost entirely private equity. Let them crash. In fact, I'd argue that it would be a great good for the market in general to knock the wind out of the parasites who live off of software patent trolling.

Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc. companies that make money from legitimate sources would be barely effected at all (and many tech companies who have huge patent portfolios have spoken in favor of ending software patents or making them less broad). And, startups could breathe a sigh of relief and stop worrying about being the subject of extortion the day they turn a big enough profit to be a target of patent trolls.

Besides, this is about how the USPTO grants software patents. It's not about revoking them or abolishing existing patents, though lawsuits to break some of the more pernicious ones probably would follow.

[tkeller]

This is simply not true. Regardless of how, say Microsoft, uses or doesn't use its patents, they account for a substantial percentage of its value on the books. If the accountants suddenly had to revalue them to $0, it would unquestionably have a big impact on the share price.

[SwellJoe]

Regardless of how, say Microsoft, uses or doesn't use its patents, they account for a substantial percentage of its value on the books.

I'd need to see some evidence of this assertion. When I was spending a lot more time researching tech stocks than I do now (now I spend 0 time researching tech stocks), I never saw a patent portfolio as a significant portion of the value of the companies I was investing in. Revenue and growth is king in tech company stocks. Book value is pretty much considered a big goose egg in software companies because they tend to have so little of it compared to old blue chips that have factories, brick and mortar stores, or infrastructure that has real world value. I'd be absolutely stunned if marking down their entire patent portfolio had more than a 1% impact on their market value, because I suspect even less than 1% of their revenue comes from patents...and revenue and growth is how people value MSFT.

[nitrogen]

Should that be a consideration when deciding whether to abolish software patents? If nothing else, the USPTO can grandfather the existing patents in, but restrict the ability of their owners to use them aggressively.

[tkeller]

Should it? I don't know. Will it? Absolutely.

And what does "aggressively" mean? Making a patent unenforceable will have the same effect as invalidating it.