[jontas]

> Calling for changes to patent law is where I don't understand what you're hoping to accomplish. If there was going to be any change, it would already have happened.

If true, that's a pretty depressing statement, however, it sounds like fallacious reasoning to me. Just because the law hasn't changed yet doesn't mean that things are doomed to stay this way forever.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

The problem is that everyone with enough economic or political power to do something about the patent situation has a strong incentive to preserve the status quo, because they benefit from the competitive barrier large patent arsenals create just as much.

So no one wants to touch on meaningful reform, because that would blow up just as many of their own patents. Even companies that claim to amass patents purely for defensive purposes have this incentive.

There's also an agency problem. To fight patents you need patent lawyers, but patent lawyers have a strong incentive to expand the volume of patent litigation. It's like asking why the NYSE doesn't implement one of the simple solutions that would stop HFT: they're getting a cut on the volume of trades, so they don't care at all how decoupled from economic reality trading becomes.