iPhone and Android developers are being sued by a patent troll for using in-app payments [1], based on technology developed by Apple and Google, using a patent that doesn't even apply to any of the code written by the developers. [2]
To make it worse, Apple and Google each own licenses to the patent, so it's like people who own washing machines being sued over a washing machine patent that the manufacturer has already licensed.
Oh, and iPhone developers are being sued over apps that include "forms that send data to a central server" by another troll. [3] Yeah.
How much more absurd can it get? I think someone already had your idea, and they decided to turn it into a business plan.
[1] http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2011/05/5-links-to-help-i...
[2] http://www.macworld.com/article/160031/2011/05/apple_legal_l...
[3] http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2011/05/macrosolve-joins-...
I don't know what will make software patents go away. If they totally ignore the US Supreme Court saying in the Bilski decision, essentially, "Ignore State Street; Follow Benson, Flook, Diehr", then whom will they pay attention to?
What can we do to prevent this from happening in the future? (preferably by making software patents go away).
If nothing else works, how about reductio ad absurdum. Let's go through recent sci-fi/academic literature, file patents for anything technologically feasible that has a high probability of hitting the marketplace in the next 5-10 years, and then troll away until Congress acts.