Im going to make an anti-patent comment hopefully without mistakes.
Sticking to patents there are clearly real problems with the thicket of patents where many things can be infringing without realising it (while patents are public they are impractical to study or to get an idea of all the patents in an area like touch UIs and even if you could it is hard to correctly understand and interpret the claims to work around them).
The cost of the legal actions is a real problem (for small companies) in itself partially caused by the weakness of the initial examination that means that many of the existing patents will be found invalid if ever tested in court.
The lack of certainty over validity also harms patent holders who cannot really assume that really do have a valid patent and this will harm them in negotiations.
If patents are to be kept (and the economic case isn't clear to me although it may be there) then if the primary examination cannot be improved then there should be a second and more in depth (and more expensive) examination that should be required before legal action is brought (or optionally to strengthen their negotiating position). After this phase it should weed out sufficient invalid patents so that there is an 80-90% chance it will be found valid in court.
Sticking to patents there are clearly real problems with the thicket of patents where many things can be infringing without realising it (while patents are public they are impractical to study or to get an idea of all the patents in an area like touch UIs and even if you could it is hard to correctly understand and interpret the claims to work around them).
The cost of the legal actions is a real problem (for small companies) in itself partially caused by the weakness of the initial examination that means that many of the existing patents will be found invalid if ever tested in court.
The lack of certainty over validity also harms patent holders who cannot really assume that really do have a valid patent and this will harm them in negotiations.
If patents are to be kept (and the economic case isn't clear to me although it may be there) then if the primary examination cannot be improved then there should be a second and more in depth (and more expensive) examination that should be required before legal action is brought (or optionally to strengthen their negotiating position). After this phase it should weed out sufficient invalid patents so that there is an 80-90% chance it will be found valid in court.