How about we work on not allowing patents in fields where it's unreasonable to expect the patent office to assess novelty and non-obviousness? Like software?
Or at least making their duration commensurate to the invention itself, and the speed of evolution of the field. 3 years would be more than enough time for the "inventors" to make money off their software patent.
Any or all of these 3 things would help!
Isn't it enough to publish the patent text such that it can be used as prior art to prevent other companies from patenting the same thing, but in that form can't be used to actively go after other companies from using the same technology?
Not really. If you publish X I can still patent X + Y and probably catch a lot of people doing a derivative of X. If you patent X then my X + Y patent is much less useful and if I become obnoxious about it you can always threaten to destroy my customer base by enforcing X.
It also doesn't help if you are the First Inventor To File.