The whole point of the patent program is to give you a boost in using the technology (to encourage you to come up with it in the first place)
A research program that only produces patents for patent trolls seems like a useless research program.
A research program that only produces patents for patent trolls seems like a useless research program.
I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that you need to actively use the patent in a product or forfeit all protection.
The alternative: grant a patent but if it not used within some scope of time in some way it becomes public domain or otherwise no longer considered a person's intellectual property. So you go to some company and say "I've solved your problem and I want to license my solution to you" and they tell you either you're going to sell it to them cheap or they'll just wait you out. You either take it or lose the patent in short order and now they can use it free. Now the only people that even own intellectual property are the big guys, and if you don't sell they let you lay fallow until your ownership becomes forfeit. You either sell to them or lose the patent.
I hate patent trolls too, but this alternative is worse. I personally don't like intellectual property in general, I think the best solution is to just not have it. Trade secrets are one thing, making it illegal for someone to reverse engineer something they bought or draw pictures they saw elsewhere in public is a bit absurd.
Take James Watt for example, Matthew Boulton could just have told Watt to take a hike and started manufacturing improved steam engines by himself. Watt couldn't have afforded to make steam engines independently, and why would any investor bother supporting him with capital if they could just set up production without him too?
The problem is with trivial patents, not patents in general.
Watts held back progress significantly and steam engine development was hampered by his and others patents until the expired. The steam engine would have been built to pump water out of mines whether patents existed or not.
You have transformed a structure where one entities invents and produces to a market structure with one where those are separate roles.
You like the former and abhor the later. But from the outside, this change is absolutely meaningless. It's no different than any other make-or-buy decision.
(Note that "sells a license" is exactly the same as "patent trolling".)
All these feelings you people have are based on the idea of "superficial" patents that aren't "real innovation". Which is, indeed, a problem. But it has nothing to do with the above. Assume some actually useful patent, and these objections fall apart.