It feels like there's going to come a day when there's nothing left to innovate without getting instantly sued. Everything that could possibly be created will either wrapped in patents, contain other patents, or be "closely related" to further patents.

I look forward to this particular bubble popping, although what people are going to do once they realize that everyone's sitting on everyone else's hands is beyond me.

"The trouble is that in this industry so often a patent is not a clearly defined property right, but a lottery ticket of uncertain value"

That's why you need lots of tickets to guarantee a win.

Is the end result of this whole mess and congress' refusal to do anything substantial about it that countries like China cease to be copiers of technology invented elsewhere and become safe-havens for innovators to do what they do?

Would we even have a software industry if the original people patented conditional statements, loops, variable assignments, etc?

undefined

This is interesting:

"In 1895, George B. Selden, a patent lawyer and inventor, was granted a broad patent on the automobile, covering a machine with four wheels powered by a gasoline engine. Henry Ford and other early automakers fought the patent for years, and it was eventually pruned back in 1911."

Could the big companies use the patents to make investments in startups? So companies with an investment from Google/Microsoft would come under the protective umbrella. That could be a value add.