> Companies can only sue for a percentage of the revenue they themselves generated from sale of the product related to the patent. This would nullify one of th

> Companies can only sue for a percentage of the revenue they themselves generated from sale of the product related to the patent. This would nullify one of the original purposes of the patent: to protect "the little guy" who had his idea stolen. If you come up with a great idea, start to market it, then immediately get it ripped off by a huge corporation that then is only ever on the hook for the tiny amount you managed to make before they stole it, then the "protection" evaporates. Of course, I don't believe patents should really exist at all (I think there are much better models of protection that don't involve such a clearly exploitable mechanism), but just want to show any time you talk about "fixing" the patent system while still keeping it, most good intentioned solutions quickly end up being more complex than initially thought.