So basically an exact opposite of Intellectual Ventures? The problem with this is that people are still wasting energy, money, and time defending themselves. We need to get to a point where people can do their jobs without having to be paranoid that their going to get slammed with a lawsuit for some obscure and vague patent.
I think patents should be issued on a use it or lose it basis: if you do not make attempts to at least produce or license the product, you should not be allowed to horde it's IP and you it to extort others. Non-practicing entities, aka patent trolls, should be made illegal in general if they aren't making attempts to license their IP.
Sorry to be a nay sayer, but it won't work. If this requirement were set in place, a patent troll will get around it by hiring a coder for a week to get something out really quick that does something nobody needs and then they'll sell one copy to their grandma. This won't evoke any real change unless you manage to make it very complicated. There would have to be mandates in the law like x% of your company's revenue must be from actual sales of the product or something like it.
The better solution is to just end software patents. They have no value in the current software economy.
Of course there are loop holes in the the suggestion I made, it wasn't meant to be a cure-all solution, but rather to point out there are many many more pragmatic ways to go about software patents. I agree that the original inventor should be protected to an extent, but the current system is broken and needs reform.
Yes, it's not at all a perfect solution. But it's a practical hack that one of us could start, so it probably shouldn't be compared to what legislation to fix the issue could theoretically do.
I think patents should be issued on a use it or lose it basis: if you do not make attempts to at least produce or license the product, you should not be allowed to horde it's IP and you it to extort others. Non-practicing entities, aka patent trolls, should be made illegal in general if they aren't making attempts to license their IP.