Effectively, Big Corp would spin up "Obvious Shopping Cart Patents, LLC", wholly owned by Big Corp, and register their patents for a given category through it. Then they could sell the entire company to another entity without the patents themselves transferring ownership.
The best fix for patents I can think of is simply lowering their lifetime to somewhere in the 2 - 5 year range.
I'd say a better solution is to just make software ineligible for patents entirely.
In the 'real' (as in physical) world there are still some good patents issued. But for computer related stuff (and that's what the bulk of Yahoo!'s patents will be about it has been quite a while since I saw a patent that made me think 'good that someone spent the years required in order to come up with this and that their rights are protected with a patent'.
I'd suggest a retro-active limitation of patents that do not involve anything physical of 3 years. That should be enough of a head-start and will immediately take care of all these ticking time bombs of patent portfolios in the hands of aging and ailing Leviathans.
On the other hand, I think that software and business methods should not be eligible for patent protection at all.
A lot of nonsense is swept in under this seemingly reasonable cover story. If I can't build a device that embodies my invention, in what sense have I really invented it?
I dislike patents in general and software in particular, but that one can invent yet not commercialize is not farfetched.
On the other hand, if Bob invents something, but chooses not to produce it, then he's effectively relinquishing his rights to patent protection.
When we allow Bob to simply transfer his "invention" (an idea basically) to Patent Corp. in exchange for cash, and Patent Corp then uses that to extort people, we massively incentivize dreaming up random ideas in the hope of getting them patented. That incentive exists whether or not the idea is a good one, practical, effective or any other characteristics that reasonable people use to evaluate things.
Such restrictions would kill the patent troll business overnight.
That would be one solution. But the cause of the patent trolling is not the transferrable patents - its the human nature. There will always be some humans finding _some_ way to make money instead of thinking of doing the _right_ thing.
There is no way that my improvement to the derivatives market would have ever been worth my time if I couldn't sell the patent to financial institutions.
People that have never had a good idea in their life imagine that patent holders are making widgets in their woodshed, or have the ability to make said widget in their woodshed.
But the reality is that there was no way I could ever have commercialized this in a way that had so few risks, aside from my ability to cough up $12,000 at the time.
Yeah let me just go recreate the financial derivatives market and lobby Congress for the rest of my life just so that children on reddit won't call me a patent troll.
Not even if you could grant them a license, but not ownership?
I probably wouldn't have pursued the patent if that was the only option. Unless the costs to filing patents were also cheaper. Lots of variables that this simple discussion doesn't consider.
Sorry guys!
I would almost give you a pass for saying "most" if not for noticing that my patent cites other "actual financial innovations" that financial institutions filed as patents and got approved, popular opinion on the internet lives in a separate reality than any framework this country functions on
software of course iterates much faster than other inventions, meaning a 19 year monopoly can really stifle the industry
thats the only debate on patents, software applicability