Sure, of course. I guess my point is: Think of the patent debate as a continuum where at one end you have 'strong patents' and at the other end you have 'weak

Sure, of course. I guess my point is: Think of the patent debate as a continuum where at one end you have 'strong patents' and at the other end you have 'weak patents'. At the strong patents end you have a prevalence of IP trolling. At the weak/no patents end you have a prevalence of reverse engineering and heavily reduced incentive to innovate (might as well just copy and produce/market cheaper/better). IP trolling and reverse engineering are kind of edge-case exploits. It isn't clear to me that anything in the middle of the continuum (defends against both edge cases) is really consistent with what we think of as a patent, or that there is anything in the middle that is actually possible enforce in a fair and consistent matter.