I hope that avc, ycombinator, Andreessen Horowitz and a lot of known VC and business angels introduce a new simple rule on their agreement:

To get funded, a company must not try to obtain software patent, and if they do have software patent(s), they will publicly say they will not try to license them and will not sue for infringement of one of their patent.

Beside clearing up the landscape, it will send a clear message, hopefully that is going to be heard by politicians and media: software patent doesn't help innovation, quite the opposite, the guys that fund innovation refuse to give money to companies (ab)using software patent.

Moreover, as VCs seem to be able to work on templates for the paperwork to lower the cost of the creation and founding of a start-up, couldn't they work on standard responses to lower the cost of defending against a patent troll as well ?