With direct patent troll cost (loss of company values) calculated for the last years by BU at about half a trillion plus blocking of innovation, loss of jobs and indirect costs to companies at one point society has to question the priorities: To make (very) few much richer and loosing whole industries or to create an environment where the whole economy can prosper. History has some good examples on that e.g. from the first industrial revolution that was led by the UK. After Prussia / Germany completely relaxed IP laws it became the leading industrial nation in Europe. The UK where strong special interest groups pushed through stringent IP & patent law lost it leadership role & dominance of the industry and has till today not been able to recover from that.

On patent trolls & the 500 billion: The Private and Social Costs of Patent Trolls (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1930272) Abstract: In the past, non-practicing entities (NPEs) - firms that license patents without producing goods - have facilitated technology markets and increased rents for small inventors. Is this also true for today’s NPEs? Or are they “patent trolls” who opportunistically litigate over software patents with unpredictable boundaries? Using stock market event studies around patent lawsuit filings, we find that NPE lawsuits are associated with half a trillion dollars of lost wealth to defendants from 1990 through 2010, mostly from technology companies. Moreover, very little of this loss represents a transfer to small inventors. Instead, it implies reduced innovation incentives.