You seem to think that explaining the system is the same as justifying it. For example, saying "it costs $500K" constitutes minimizing that sum or calling it ordinary and reasonable. Neither is true. I don't need to pile on the condemnations in every sentence.
As for what "something" is: I happen to be retired while you probably will be living with the patent system for a few years yet. So don't just say "someone should do something." Whatever that "something" is, you'll be more motivated if you think of it.
> The defendant's standard tactic is usually to file for IPR, or PTAB reexamination of the patent, which is like a trial without a courtroom.
For it to be the standard tactic, that implies a worldview in which defendants have that tactic as an option, and that's where the impression you think most defendants have access to that level of assets comes from.
But once you've explained the fees, it becomes clear that the typical defendant's standard tactic isn't to "file for IPR, or PTAB reexamination".
I'm not sure what the standard tactic is, but it isn't the one they can't afford.
When I've spoken with other patent lawyers, they've been skeptical that working engineers/devs regularly "reinvent" things covered in patents by accident. They have said they don't believe such people exist. Yet in my line of work, it's a near daily occurrence; it wouldn't even be possible to write them all down some days, and often it's things that were figured out years or decades prior. I know this with confidence because occasionally I look up techniques I've developed before that I want to use in some project that warrants it, and then I'm dismayed to find them recently patented, sometimes more recently than when I first developed the techniques.
So hopefully you can understand why I might have the impression patent lawyers (some at least) imagine that most "defendants" (people pursued for infringement or under threat of such) are the type of people they have as paying clients, and that other defendants (who I think are the majority) don't exist.
> So don't just say "someone should do something".
But I haven't said that. You came close, though, thus asking what you had in mind.
My argument here is not that someone should do something. It's that most defendants won't pursue IPR/PTAB reexamination because it's not an option for them, and companies with sufficient assets to pursue the reexamination are better off paying licence fees, so who is it that's both motivated and capable to pursue the IPR/PTAB reexamination? If there isn't anyone, it's not going to be overturned, is it, and most infringers (accidental or not) are just stuck with it even it would be overturned on reexamination, aren't they?
The answer to that is a missing piece in your explanation of the system, which without it seems to say that it's "standard" to end up reexamining these sorts of patents and overturning them if appropriate. I would be very surprised if that really is what happens, but also genuinely interested if that's the typical outcome.
OK, you're offended by the word "standard." I get that. If I said that criminal defendants' "standard" tactic is to stall and hope the witnesses forget about it (I don't know if that's true, actually), you would be offended because really poor ones can't get out on bail? I wouldn't say "too bad for them." The legal system is well-known to be stacked against poor people on almost every level, and even Charles Dickens was not the first to write about it.
This is Hacker News, not Patent Law 101. I'm not obligated to explain every aspect of the system in a comment.
I gather you think there's something new or unique in your comments about poor defendants. There is not. People have been saying it since the 90s. You are preaching to the already-converted.
Finally, if you read my paper on SSRN (which I've cited here many times), you'd see that "programmers' standard toolbox of techniques" is what I called out as something missing from the law.
That paper got cited in the Checkpoint amicus brief to SCOTUS in the CLS Bank case. That's an example of doing "something" but I will admit it's not much.
If you really wanted to do more, you'd start or join a political movement to "abolish software patents." There already are such organizations.
As for what "something" is: I happen to be retired while you probably will be living with the patent system for a few years yet. So don't just say "someone should do something." Whatever that "something" is, you'll be more motivated if you think of it.