>I would actually be interested in taking this exchange to email.

Sure. I would like to, but only if you treat my points charitably (you haven't :(.) - the objective is to learn. If that's not an issue, though, would the btilly email address in your profile work? I can send a full reply there.

Some brief notes to think about in the meantime:

Patents have multiple social functions. Encouraging progress can be performed by achieving other related, intermediary, policy steps. For instance, if we weaken industry-peripheral patents, do we just cause firms to resort to secrecy (and is that better for society over the long run)? Are there other solutions other than 'yes patent'/'no patent' depending on the patent type? Do patent licenses required for industry-participation have better solutions than just 'no patents'? See: Standards collectives/FRAND licensing terms/etc?

Obviousness is VERY difficult to judge years later after having read a patent. Much like seeing the answer to a puzzle or math problem, it's hard to go back and feign ignorance in your analysis, and once you read a lot of patents, suddenly you see the sweep of technological development very differently.

Obviousness pt 2: What if patents are needed to secure the benefit from an R&D effort. Is it worthwhile to say 'we shouldn't research this [New Medicine] because it seems obvious'? How else could we reasonably finance that R&D work? Obviousness analysis is done in reference to a 'person having ordinary skill in the art', which is an incredibly flexible legal fiction. Again, do you have issues with flexibility being used to achieve policy goals you don't agree with? Note that the artificiality of this test is amplified because we analyze this person at the time the patent was filed. Next, since 2016, KSR is the leading case in the states regarding obviousness. The KSR test performs a series of comparisons between what the field knew and what typical improvements or techniques the field uses to determine if the improvement was obvious or not. This test is heavily criticized for making innovations in slow but consistently developed fields far harder to patent, despite the fact that patents in those fields are less controversial than those in rapidly iterating fields.

What specific elements of our legal regime make patent trolling too easy and profitable? Is it the cost of litigation? Is it how IP rights can be assigned at all (and what are the ramifications if we prevent assignment)? Is this a quantitative problem that we can fix by tweaking the numbers a bit or a categorical one which requires fundamental changes in the system? Btw, how large do you think the patent trolling problem is, dollar wise? Is it a priority as far as reforms go? What else do you think are competing legislative/regulatory priorities?

Prior art is already a bar to patentability.

Re: Unclean hands. Vexatious litigant protections exist in the court system independently of patent litigation. They aren't used much. Why do you think that is the case?

Software is not the only industry that interacts with the patent system, and other industries have different needs and are influenced by patents differently (which, btw, is a core flaw with PG's note). If you want to change core elements of the patent system, how do those modifications affect other industries?