Lets remember that it is big corporations that lobby for the kind of patent and IP law that makes this possible.
On top of that, you have the over loaded patent office assuming bad patents will get sorted out in court. While at the same time judges assume that if a patent was granted it was legit.
To fix the system, you have to break it first.
Perfect.
It's now self-perpetuating. Look at some of Lessig's videos on Change Congress; he's talked about how Congress, while restructuring and changing regulation on the telecom industry in the 90s, was careful to ensure that what was left over would be able to contribute to re-election campaigns.
First they grow and grow and grow. Reform is occasional and minor (at best), eventually they get so big and bad that a crisis forces real change.
The state is then transformed into a lean mean productive machine. Which starts to grow slowly and the process repeats.
Of the top of my head I can think of Sweden, where a crisis forced massive reform and now it's almost ready for a crisis again.
And Great Britain in the 1970, crisis -> Thatcher -> prosperity -> growing government -> less prosperity -> coming crisis.
Guess where the US is in that cycle.