I disagree that it is an elegant solution. Ideas are something that have a resource cost to conceive, develop and disseminate, but which have no cost to the dev

I disagree that it is an elegant solution. Ideas are something that have a resource cost to conceive, develop and disseminate, but which have no cost to the developer afterwards. The more people who use an idea, the better from an economic standpoint, because the use of an idea is not a finite resource like, say, water. Therefore, the economic properties that you want are to, on the supply side, reward people who produce ideas - an the patent system does that - and on the demand side, to encourage as much appropriate use of the idea as possible, which is the opposite of what the patent system does. A monopoly is therefore inappropriate. A system where product developers pay the same amount into a pool regardless of how many patents they use, and have to declare truthfully what patent documents they referred to for the purposes of distributing the pool would work far better. That way, products would have no reason not to use all the newest technologies, but people who file good quality patents would still get paid.