I have a similar but opposite proposal: The intended purpose of patents is to _support_ innovation. People spending time and money on inventing should be able

I have a similar but opposite proposal: The intended purpose of patents is to _support_ innovation. People spending time and money on inventing should be able to reap financial benefits of such research rather than seeing their hard research work just being copied over by someone else. Thereby there should be an absolute maximum on the litigation brought by someone using patents based on the R&D spend they had for the said patent(s). Let's say that the litigation can at most be 10x of the said investment. Since determining how much of the R&D expenses were directed towards the said patents could be tough, the maximum litigation for all patents could be set to 10x the money a company has spent on R&D in say the two years preceding the filing of concerned patents. This means that if a company sues X for $120 million after having spend $20 million for the given period, they can now sue someone else for at most $80 million for any other patent(s) over the same period. Further details can be worked out.