[chasing]

The flaw, here, I think, is that's it's still prohibitively expensive. If it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to invalidate a patent, we're probably talking hundreds of millions of dollars to invalidate all of the patents that could be used for trolling.

That's part of the problem, right? For each patent we hear about being killed, there are ten, twenty, or a hundred more waiting in the wings to take over. And why wouldn't there be, since there appears to be little financial downside for the trolls.

Anyway: Having the community spend millions upon millions upon millions to fix this problem would just be another financial drain on the industry. This is a situation where the government needs to step in and do its job, because there's a busted system and the players involved are simply not capable of fixing it without the government's help.

[burntsushi]

> This is a situation where the government needs to step in and do its job

That's what they're doing right now. And that's the problem.

[chasing]

No. The job of the government is to use patents "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." Says so right in the owner's manual. Patent trolls are exploiting legal loopholes to do the opposite of "promoting progress," so the laws need to be adjusted to fix this. As far as I'm aware, private entities cannot pass laws. So. The government needs to be involved. And they need to do a better job.

[burntsushi]

I think we'll just have to disagree. It is my opinion that answers of the form, "well the only problem is that the laws are just a little off and it can all be fixed with a few tweaks," are incredibly naive. They've been repeated over and over as government has grown in size. It ignores the fundamental problem: at the end of the day, it's just humans making and enforcing the laws, and they are under extreme pressure by the system to become corrupt and bend the laws in their favor.

If you want a system of IP run by elected representatives, then you've got to accept the corruption that comes with it.

[chasing]

You're disagreeing with something I'm not saying.

[burntsushi]

I disagreed with your proposed solution. Which you said was to just tweak the laws.

[galenward]

Josh, you're right - that's why it isn't possible right now. I put that we need a simpler, cheaper way to invalidate patents before a patent-killing x-prize is possible in the post, but maybe not clearly or loudly enough.