Why not a bounty amongst the industry for whoever takes a patent troll to court and wins?
The way it works now is that most defendants want to settle because the legal costs are too high for the defendant, and the patent trolls know this. If the defendants pooled their money for anyone who took them to court and won (not even a full patent co-op, which has its own challenges) - would that change how the patent trolls did their math - and diminish their ability to sue many parties?
I was looking at it the other way: how to disincentivize selling patents to trolls by increasing value to smaller companies, but I suppose it is equally valid on the other side.
I think the biggest problem with fighting patent trolls after they've acquired the patents is that they're not really businesses. So you win... who's to say they'll pay? They have a lot of organizational options available to them that actual, functioning businesses likely do not.
Aka don't fight a battle on terrain where your opponent has greater flexibility than you
I'd be more inclined to fight the actual trolls politically. A) They don't create jobs, B) they've got relatively small financial reserves compared to a larger functioning business, and C) they probably fly flag-of-convenience corporate registration with minimal interaction with the state (not that that's probably rare)
I have an even better idea. Why not the industry just maintain a blacklist of trolls? The said troll will not get any support in the IT industry wherever he goes across the USA. From hardware to software to networking, the troll will be deprived of services. Not just that, the tech blogs in the industry can also defame the trolls, so one day that understand the consequences and think thrice before trolling.
The way it works now is that most defendants want to settle because the legal costs are too high for the defendant, and the patent trolls know this. If the defendants pooled their money for anyone who took them to court and won (not even a full patent co-op, which has its own challenges) - would that change how the patent trolls did their math - and diminish their ability to sue many parties?