[georgemcbay]

"The original point of patents is to provide protection to inventors and give them a head start in implementing their inventions"

Not really true; the original point of patents (in the US, anyway) in the minds of Jefferson and others who (in some cases begrudgingly) defined them was to enhance the amount common, public knowledge by enticing inventors to publicly document their inventions rather than hold them as trade secrets. The "protection" and "head start" bits are really the payment made in return for that public documentation, but not the actual reason for the system to exist. The idea that patents exist to protect "the little guy" is a modern idea, ironically invented and propagated primarily by big corporations and "big law".

This makes most modern software patents (which are routinely violated by people reinventing fairly trivial systems even when having no prior knowledge of the existing patent implementations) all the more ridiculous.

[fzltrp]

Yes, this is correct. Thank you for pointing that out.

If a company is producing new ideas, and stock pile them in the form of patents, are they playing the game correctly?

Is it (just) an issue in the case of sotware patent?