OK...
> we have a number of our own patents that we employ defensively to make sure we can continue to run our business securely.
Huh? This doesn't support the beginning of the sentence at all. If your only use of patents is defensive, then the system is all cost and no benefit to you. Getting rid of the system would give you all of the "benefits" you currently enjoy. What value are you seeing?
That's not strictly speaking true.
Having and using defensive patents has the advantage of disadvantaging competitors who don't have defensive patents but wish they did.
(Not that this is necessarily what djk44 would like to state as his reason for seeing benefits, just as a general fact)
This is not a compelling argument that the system has any value. "Sure, it's destroying value at our company, but that's fine because it's destroying even more value across the street!"
You don’t necessarily have to draw the line. One potential legislative solution would be to simply throw up our hands, admit we can’t stop one without stopping the other, then deliberately choose to sacrifice the (vanishingly small number of) good actors in order to get rid of the huge number of bad actors.
How many lone garage inventors are out there fighting big companies over their legit inventions vs. the number of ridiculous patent troll cases?
Not because those are hard to differentiate logically, but because one side is all about manipulating the legal system while the other has no knowledge of it nor funds with which to navigate it. Also, the system is supposed to protect the latter from big corporate legal departments that want to steal his idea. It's a hard problem because it's profitable for bad actors to get wrong decisions made.