The system has to become again "healthy" to foster real innovation and competition, not a garbage bin to block each others.
Maybe companies shouldn't be allowed to own a patent. If a patent is always owned by the original inventors (so it moves with them if they change jobs, and any patent license fees always go to the inventors), it would help. But I guess there's always loopholes in such simplistic ideas ;)
That's what I fear is not the case anymore. And I am not sure we're getting back there. With so many regulations in all industries, it has become impossible to innovate from your home. Unless you really want to patent BS like big companies do, which is ugly...
It sucks, but that's how it has become.
If you want to protect such minorities, you can offer them a discount, but make it clear indeed that the patent belongs to the individual for even longer, not to the company.
Doing nothing as it has been until now certainly doesn't help.
This is a terrible idea. Google will not think twice before spending 100k for a patent on hello world, but startups and small businesses would be priced out of the patent system entirely. All this would do is further increase and entrench the power of large corporations to the detriment of startups, entrepreneurs, SMBs, and ultimately, consumers.
My suggestion is 1000 USD in year 1.
After 10 years the fee is 1m USD per year.
After 20 years the fee is 1bn USD per year.
The current schedule of 23 years aligns nicely with this. If a Pharma patent is really generating billions of returns then maybe it would be worth for the company to pay 8 bn USD fees in year 23.