Also this was a great piece of journalism.
I started listening to the This American Life podcast after I heard a piece on the financial crisis. Their reporting of business matters is truly extraordinary. Their stories often have a narrative that I think it is possible to disagree with, but the sheer depth with which they tackle a subject is amazing, and incredibly informative.
Their non-business related shows are great, too, but very different. If you liked this piece, check out some of their archived shows. You'll learn a lot.
Tim O'Reilly launched BountyQuest a while ago http://oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/ask_tim/2003/bountyquest_10... but that died off, not sure a for-profit organization can be in the business of challenging dubious patents for a long time.
You can regulate (I'm not saying it's easy, but you can) or you can give the store away.
Public investment in effectively policing IP might well mean more effective assignment and more limited scope. Leaving the landscape more open for innovation. In my interpretation, leaving more in the hands of the public good.
And, if you truly believe in that "guy with a good idea and good execution", in the touchstone "entrepreneur", then providing and environment where s/he is not immediately threatened by crushing financial (not technical, but financial -- rights purchased, lawyers purchased, laws purchased) concerns would seem paramount.
People aren't willing to pay the price and effort of maintaining the common good, and then they wonder why their ideology predicated upon it does not work.
The power of monopoly for 15 years? Such a potent legal bludgeon needs to be administered very carefully. Instead of being designed carefully and insightfully, the current patent system is designed to be as bureaucratically obfuscated as possible. It just looks like a bunch of complicated stuff is happening, but what's really happening is that lawyers are being paid tons to shoot meaningless arcane gibberish back and forth.
It would be like licensing canisters of nerve poison, with the licensing process designed by a paranoid schizophrenic.
We have a system that is fundamentally designed to reward the people who pay. Significant filing and legal resource fees. Prosecution fees, to issuance and then in subsequent disputes. Increasingly, you can't even "enter the game" without deep pockets. (Except, I guess, to "sell" to one or another IP troll. Essentially making you their agent, rather than the reverse.) Putting us on the road to a class-based system with regard to patent (and perhaps IP more generally) rights.
Decide that intellectual property falls out of common property. It is a licensed, limited monopoly. Regulate it as such. Review it closely, and grant it with suspicion and due investigation.
How are you going to define such a system? Not on the basis of fee-based service and the primacy of private ownership (ueber alles).
Monitor how things proceed, and when they start to get out of kilter, adjust. IP is not some sacrosanct right; it's a tool. Use it effectively.
But... large portions of the populace continues to be sold propaganda to the contrary. Too stupid to pay the price it takes to effectively manage the IP commons.
(A corresponding point in all this: People "lament the off-shoring of jobs", but buy all their cr-p from overseas producers who benefit from flaunting the IP rights that elevate domestic producers' costs. Too stupid to see the hypocrisy in this, not to mention the self-destructive nature of the behavior.
One might argue that they are circumventing a broken rights system. In which case, why do they continue to subject domestic producers (and so, generalized, themselves and their own employment) to it?
Or, one might argue that those IP rights are a benefit to society. In which case, why are they circumventing them in their own actions?
For myself, I'd say that some rights are legitimate -- meaning beneficial to society -- and others not. By ignoring the distinction, we reduce individual choices to immediate self-motivation and short term benefit, but abdicate any coherent policy necessary to long term benefit.
We'll never have a perfect system. But it could be made less FUBAR than it is. If not, we really are screwed.)
You're probably trying to find something that's not there. Just read what's there. I'm not disagreeing with you.
We have a system that is fundamentally designed to reward the people who pay.
Yes, people pay for mumbo jumbo, then they get to do stuff in the legal system. How about a system where we get results that aren't nonsense? We need to incentivize the patent office to avoid being full of shit.