Patents are a good idea for rewarding people with original ideas. If they were required to stay with the original owner and weren't transferrable, this would be a different (and similarly problematic issue), but as patents have value and are transferrable, they will be bought and sold as investments by various people/corporations/whatever.
In theory patents are maybe a good idea because it provides exclusive rights to "own" an idea for enough time to extract value out of it by selling a product or service around it (if you so choose). You could argue that software patents lasting 20 years is "too long" for technology. You could also argue that patents aren't worldwide enforceable so, you need to get one everywhere, or basically you can't enforce it.
I don't really know that you can "fix" patents without throwing them away and rethinking them, but on a system as large and impactful as patents, the repercussions might be a lot worse than the problems we have now.
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Patents are a good idea for rewarding people with original ideas. If they were required to stay with the original owner and weren't transferrable, this would be a different (and similarly problematic issue), but as patents have value and are transferrable, they will be bought and sold as investments by various people/corporations/whatever.
In theory patents are maybe a good idea because it provides exclusive rights to "own" an idea for enough time to extract value out of it by selling a product or service around it (if you so choose). You could argue that software patents lasting 20 years is "too long" for technology. You could also argue that patents aren't worldwide enforceable so, you need to get one everywhere, or basically you can't enforce it.
I don't really know that you can "fix" patents without throwing them away and rethinking them, but on a system as large and impactful as patents, the repercussions might be a lot worse than the problems we have now.