[thrmsforbfast]

Shipping & Transit LLC had not only a prototype, but also a product:

Jones developed this into a service called BusCall, which had some modest success.

I think the actual solution is simply improved patent review. The patent system is broken because there are so many bad patents; if only truly innovative stuff was patented, I think a lot of the reasonable criticism would become a lot less reasonable.

But without additional funding, improved scrutiny at filing time would also dramatically increase the cost of acquiring a patent, which is already expensive for individual inventors.

[conistonwater]

The FDA charges pharma companies for drug reviews (https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd1774), and it works but leads to an appearance of a conflict of interest. They could just make the filing fee equal to what it costs to do a review.

[thrmsforbfast]

Steko's comment might be a good place to continue that particular conversation. Such an approach would require careful design of incentive structures so that patents remain accessible without making the status quo of bullshit patents even worse.