The fundamental idea of granting a time-limited monopoly (via a patent) to the inventor/assignee to use the invention is to encourage research and development expenses by the company. These expenses are now like an investment/return in exchange for benefits to the entire society after the patent expires. If use of a patent in a product gives the company competitive advantage, they may recover their R&D expense with it.

An interesting / novel way to curb the issues with the patent system would be to cap the maximum monetary benefit a company may get out of a patent based on the R&D expense involved in coming up with the patent. For example, if the expenses involved in coming up with invention is X (including filing fees?), the patent may be set to expire once the company makes say 10X out of it. If it takes $2 to come up with an idea, then the maximum worth of that patent under this example would be $20, which would still be a good return on the investment.

Of course, tracking this would be painful, but so is the current state of the patent system! On the very least, this may be applied to limit awarded damages during litigation.