I sometimes wonder what the consequences would be of stipulating that patents had to be uniformly licensed to all interested parties without exception. Also that you couldn't decline to offer a license - you had to set reasonable terms and then accept all takers unconditionally.

I realize that's never going to happen and would probably have lots of unintended consequences. It's just a thought experiment after all. I find it interesting to think about because R&D can still be recouped under such a model which ... is kind of the entire (supposed) point of the system. Allegedly.

If nothing else we would presumably have seen mass market epaper and 3D printers much sooner.