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How’s this for a new M+A regulation: make it illegal to increase the size of a patent portfolio by m+A. Not to say you couldn’t keep their patents, but that the total number of patents owned by the new company couldn’t be any larger than the larger of the two companies.

If the M+A causes the divestiture of even a significant number of low value patents, it could mitigate some harm.

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That would likely have the unintended consequence of spinning off a lot of new non-practicing entities with a large number of low-value patents in their portfolios.

Are you sure that's what you want? Those companies are more commonly known as "patent trolls".

The optimist in me says that if you make the problem bad enough, we might actually get around to fixing it. Or, maybe instead of NPEs, it will be Native American tribes.

On second thought, let’s fix antitrust legislation and enforcement.

This is a compromise made to appease antitrust regulators in some situations, already. In a deal of this size, approval would likely require some patent portfolio compromises to get done.

Case in point the current Qualcomm acquisition of NXP. In that case, to satisfy EU regulatory officials, Qualcomm has agreed to give up some NXP patents (that must be sold) and agreed to not take legal action on some others, except for defensive purposes.

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