I personally think that there are several things that could be done to at least slow down the increasing
epidemic of patent trolls. I think that part of the problem is that there is currently nothing for the patent
trolls to be afraid of. If it looks like they are going to lose a case, they just drop it and move on to the
next one. If there was some sort of consequences to them, either paying a fine, damages, or court costs,
then they might be a little more hesitant to file as many lawsuits. Another option would be to limit the
number of lawsuits a particular company could file in a certain amount of time. In order for that to work
though, there would have to be transparency regarding who the company actually is that is filing the
lawsuits, and that alone may keep them from filing as many. On the other end though, I think the patent
office needs to be a lot more specific in the patents that they award, and not allow people to get patents
that are extremely vague and allow for non-descriptive lawsuits in the future, when they never even
imagined the technology that the vague patents might somehow cover. Which ever path we take, we
definitely need to do something though. If we allow things to continue as they are, any small company
that tries to innovate or create something new, will be sued out of business before they even have a
chance to succeed.