Software Patents stifling innovation

I like this post from Leonard Lin. a former Yahoo employee from the acquisition of Upcoming.org. Its found at Andy Baio's opinion piece on Wired

certainly everyone in the industry, knows that the patent system is completely broken. For those that don't, the recent This American Life episode "When Patents Attack" (http://www.thisamericanlife.or... ) is a good start.

One thing not explicitly laid out in that show, is just how bad it is. While the focus is on patent trolls (NPEs) I guarantee you that in the tech industry, and probably most others, *everything is infringing*. Of course, as an implementor, you're not allowed to look at patents anyway (what was the point of them again?) because of enhanced damages of willfull infringement, but the fact of the matter is that with complex technical systems, there are too many parts for any of it to be un-patented (especially since patents are handed out like candy - average review time is what, less than 16hrs?).
Those unfamiliar with the phenomenon of the "tragedy of the anticommons" (the negatives of over-fractionalized ownership) may want to take a look at Michael Heller's book The Gridlock Economy (alternatively, his 1997 paper The Tragedy of the Anticommons http://ideas.repec.org/p/wdi/p... or his Google Book Talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... )
At the end of the day, the current patent system a huge albatross hanging around the neck of all industries dependent on technical innovation/creativity (i.e. the entire knowledge economy). Numbers like half a trillion dollars are thrown around for costs just from patent trolls (http://articles.businessinside... ) but if anyone were to do a larger study, I think the actual innovation/productivity cost would be many, many times higher.
In terms of reforming the system, at the minimum, enforcing FRAND licensing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... ), disallowing suits by Non-Practicing Entities, and allowing Independent Invention as a defense (http://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/... ) seem to be no-brainers, but it seems like the only hope for reform is when it gets more expensive to fight these lawsuits than to actually try to reform the patent system.