I once worked at a software company in the supply chain space. We once, and I am surprised it was only once, had to spend big money (for us), money we did not have, to hire legal help to defend us against what was clearly a patent troll company. That first hand experience really soured me personally. I don't know what the solution is. There has to be some balance.

I thought Kelo was national news. I didn't learn about it through any effort other than listening to the radio.

My issue in the software world is that we are now patenting the trivial,
Apple: rounded corners
Microsoft: when you double-click the mouse, have that do something different than a single click.
and the obvious,
Sega: to direct a player in the way the game wants you to go, put up an arrow pointing in the desired direction.
Eolas: When you have browser plug-ins feeding content into the web page you're viewing, have that content work without the user clicking on it.

There is a "non-obvious" standard in patent law and I think ideas in software are being patented today that would not have been patented 25 years ago because people would have been ashamed to claim them as any sort of advancement. To me, "non-obvious" means given a problem, someone in the field would not have derived the identical solution given five minutes of thought. It means you need people in the patent office that understand the field and can make a good judgement. That is something I just don't think we have. This is a problem in the software world. I'm not anti-patent. I just think in the physical world, it USUALLY is obvious when what you've come up with is trivial. When you're looking at lines of code, it is not.

For your enjoyment:
http://www.cracked.com/article_15693_the...

I have run into this problem before. I paid a patent attorney a lot of money to find that there were several similar existing patents that were not being exercised but would make my idea difficult to produce without infringement. My attorney said it has become quite common and that his ilk is largely responsible. Apparently some patent attorneys privy to the information look for openings and file in hopes of someone violating.

Perhaps it is time to re-evaluate the particular time limits one who doesn’t act on their rights can collect, but intellectual property must be protected at least long enough to encourage investment, development, marketing and a grace period for capitalizing, or we stagnate.

Without a better option I find myself disagreeing with Forbes; a rare occurrence, but it does happen.

Lionel,
In response to your first paragraph. Do you understand what "non-obvious" means in patent law? Because you cannot just use standard english definition for this term. If you think by "obvious" it means one's ability to understand how to build the invention once it has been described to you, that is required under US patent law. An invention is always a combination of known elements(things). One cannot create something from nothing (conservation of matter and energy). There is no such standard as "trivial" in the patent world. What you may consider trivial, often solves an important problem to those people skilled in that art. Patents are the most expensive, the most time consuming and examined property rights in the world. period.
"We have people in this world that think up a idea on paper, get some patent for it, but have no desire/ability to get actual product to market. Rather than sell the idea or partner with someone who can turn the idea into a practical invention..." Like Edison, Bell, Howe, every major University in the US, IBM etc. Think about it like this, people would be happy to be independent inventors and get paid for it. But large corporations don't want to pay for others' property rights. Aside here: Bill Gates once said, that the thing he feared the most was somebody thinking an invention up in their garage-just like he did. Gates, Jobs, etc. only want to compete with themselves now that their companies are large. However, large corporations pay attention when another entity sues over property rights. This is the ONLY way for small inventors to often get paid for their work. The problem is not with inventors or their inventions (including software) it is with the lack of respect for property rights in the first place.

Yes, you are right with respect to Kelo. But this antipatent rant is the same lack of respect for property rights that lead to Kelo. How do you know about this case Lionel?

I partially agree with this article.

We have people in this world that think up a idea on paper, get some patent for it, but have no desire/ability to get actual product to market. Rather than sell the idea or partner with someone who can turn the idea into a practical invention, they lie in wait for someone to deploy tech using the same idea, and they cry foul. They never intended to make money off their ideas by production. They intended others to produce for them, and then they leach onto their revenue stream. This is particularly seen in software patents, where the clueless US Patent Office doesn't have a good concept of what non-trivial, non-obvious means.

However, there is a scary thought in this article.
Mr. Forbes points out how, over time, tech prices drop.
Then he points out that the cost of MPEG2 licensing hasn't dropped over time.
He says this is a problem because companies are being asked to pay "full price" for the technology instead of a price that "reflects the marketplace".
That assertion is just plain evil.
May a seller set his price, or not, Mr Forbes?
It doesn't matter if he thinks "innovation is harmed" by the market price.
Private property rights ought to take precedence over any forseen good that would come out of revoking them.
His kind of thinking leads to "Kelo v. City of New London" results.