I just spoke with a friend about a time when his company was approached by a patent troll.<p>The patent in question was granted in 2002 [1]. He had himself worked on the technology under "patent" in 1998, and was able to find someone who had published material as far back as 1995, and who was willing to send supporting documentation and to, if necessary, testify.<p>He talked with his attorney, who agreed the prior art he'd found was spot on, and that in legislation they'd be almost certain to win. But that it would cost ~$3m.<p>The patent trolls also were going after names such as Amazon, Facebook, and other huge companies. The troll was asking for $200k for a license from each company. As far as my friend knows, they ALL settled (or at least many of them had).<p>There were 15-20 names on that list. If they'd simply put the $200k-$300k of "licensing fees" into a common pot and used that money to fight the troll, then it would have done a small amount of good in defeating one troll's patent.<p>But really the whole system does need serious reform. His suggestion was to cause the patent trolls to have to PAY for legal fees if they lose a patent challenge, though that would just encourage them to sue from individual corporations that would declare bankruptcy on losing.<p>But I think software patents should simply be disallowed, or the bar raised (somehow?) to exclude anything vague and hand-wavy. One thought I've had was to <i>require</i> an implementation of the process being patented. Then it would be far harder to claim that your patent covers something only vaguely related, and the patent would actually be <i>useful</i> for its original purpose, which was to put the knowledge into the public domain when the patent expires.<p>[1] I wouldn't swear to the dates; they're from memory. The approximate order/scale is correct, though.