Enough ranting lets get constructive before those xxx have ruined our industry completely.

Step 1: It's election times soon so all politicians will normally be supportive to the one killer argument - patent trolls kill jobs in the US:

(a) start tracing where the money paid within these "successful extortions" goes to - I'm confident a line to drug fused parties with Brazilian hookers, private jets & yachts, endless squandering lifestyles of some of the beneficiaries or their children can easily be established and generously visualized.

(b) start large scale advertising campaigns together with these documentaries along the line "... our companies would have established xxx thousand jobs in the US if we would have not been forced by lobbying to finance the squandering lifestyles of the very few that are abusing the patent system..."

/* call that throwing around dirt - well that seems to be the language our politicians e.a. immediately understand */

Step 2: Patent laws can already be rendered nil today based on national security concerns - we need something similar in the interest of the (real) economy:

(a) all profits / royalties / fees from patent licensing are taxed at the double or at least maximum income rate due immediately when the money flows - all offshore entities are barred from receiving any funds before these taxes are paid - this is to insure that patents are used defensively and not to monopolize complete business sectors or extort huge sums from those actually creating products by NPEs.

(b) all additionally collected taxes from this are earmarked to support startups / SMEs in defending against patent litigations or generally as start-up funding

Step 3: The patent system is being reformed and all previously granted software, plants / DNA patents reviewed. Patent reviews might be prioritized e.g. by large number of requests, overwhelming prior art, clear obviousness of the invention etc.

(a) all software patents have to be demonstrated with a functional model / prototype - the application of the prototype defines the application of the patent.

(b) While these reviews or changes to the patent system are ongoing, patents claims are evaluated in all litigations in the strictest sense of the actual application / apparatus described and no (overly) broad adaption are allowed like today e.g. patents for doing xxx in telephone switching solutions blocking the same things 15 years later on the web.

In an optimal implementation these changes are coordinated / also implemented in other leading economies rendering the possibilities to circumvent or block these measures unprofitable.

A historical side-note:
In times of dire economies whenever the "rulers" of countries have seen benefit from innovation, creating of new industries and companies, they have relaxed the patent laws that overall in history almost all the time have been used merely to create monopolies or protect existing monopolies from competition. My best example for this is the rise of Prussia to one of the globally leading industrial nations from a farm based economy and the parallel downfall of the UK from leading the first industrial / technology revolution.

Now I'm almost certain that most of the above will never happen due to the vested interests / special interest groups involved or benefiting substantially from the current situation, but it would be nice to at least see some reason in the use of patent law again.