PEs are encumbered by a number of other restrictions - their "cold war" type standoff against competitors, their need to maintain a mostly positive brand in the public eye, their need to minimize the risk of a catastrophic loss in a lawsuit. So they utilize only a fraction of the latent power of their patents.
NPEs have no such restrictions. They have no competitors, no brand to maintain, no economic risk beyond what it costs to register a new shell company.
So what we see from NPEs is what the patent system actually means. It's "pure patent system". By implication, the fix is to change the patent system. Preferably by abolishing software patents, at least. (I can't speak for other fields.)
In the history of computing, I think Babbage's difference engine, von Neuman and some of the stuff from Xerox Parc in the 1970s probably deserved a patent or two. Apart from those, no.
[1] Non-practicing entities, for those who don't know. (I had to look it up.)