In its present state the patent/license system does more to gum up innovation than it does to help inventors. This is due to the extreme asymmetry between individual inventors (who have almost no power to enforce IP against big companies) and big companies (who have a virtually unlimited war chest of liberally granted patents that are mainly used to squash competition from smaller businesses.)

The options for fixing it are A. Reform the entire judicial system so that one guy can take on a foreign multinational and win if he's right, and also get the patent office to stop granting trivial or overly broad patents to protect small businesses from abusers, or B. Weaken IP law so that we get fewer of the abuses, under the theory that we aren't getting the benefits now anyways. (If a system promises benefits but delivers abuses, it can be advantageous and much more practical to get rid of the system, even if reforming it would be better.)