The current patent system helps the corporations at the cost of inventors (who will inevitably be bankrupted by suing them. Especially as with a small change a

The current patent system helps the corporations at the cost of inventors (who will inevitably be bankrupted by suing them. Especially as with a small change a new patent can be issued and the inventor counter-sued * ) Hard to do anything about that, as the lobbyists and the common folk both want patents. Perhaps a solution is to limit the number of patents an individual can hold to 100, and a corporation to 100 + 10 per employee (or some similar structure). An exception could be made if the patents would be defensive [a not-yet-existing class of patent that prevents you from being sued but doesn't let you sue]. This would be perceived as anti-big-corp, so has a chance of working for the politician pushing it. It would actually help the inventor, as it would keep the trolls out, and keep the mega corps from just patenting everything under the sun and suing right and left to prevent any startup from entering their area. It would also put a certain amount of pressure to limit the size and power of the biggest corporations (at the least encouraging them to spin off subsidiaries and employ more.) And lastly, it would cut down on the number of patents being filed daily, so that the patent authority could have time to actually review them. * I have an invention that could improve the world. The patent attorney told me that if I brought it to market, I could expect to find a Chinese knockoff with weeks, and within months I would likely be fighting just to keep production, as "improved" versions will be patented by U.S. corporations (he told me which ones even). He said it makes sense to patent anyways, and if another small time inventor doesn't see my patent and brings it to market, I could sue them. A path he assured me is less risky and possibly more lucrative that being the producer. You cannot even imagine how many items never go to market because patents. An even better system would be to simply use all the money that now goes into patents to provide grants for inventors. That would actually help me get to market (at all!) and would actually improve the world instead of hurting it.