Posner's article reminds me of a nice polemic in season 2 of _House M.D._ about the abuse of pharmaceutical patents (by way of counter-example). They take a drug they know works, tack on a vitamin molecule, patent it, and stop manufacturing / marketing its predecessor. Speaking as someone who has worked in Pharmaceutical marketing (I developed mobile sales tools), this seems pretty accurate.
Meanwhile, if you look at how difficult it was for the concept of usability to break into the mainstream (it essentially required Microsoft's persistent application of market power to popularize ideas borrowed from Apple/Xerox/et al. and Xerox tossed a lot of money and time at PARC just for starters).
If patent law were an easy problem to solve, it would have been solved.
Meanwhile, if you look at how difficult it was for the concept of usability to break into the mainstream (it essentially required Microsoft's persistent application of market power to popularize ideas borrowed from Apple/Xerox/et al. and Xerox tossed a lot of money and time at PARC just for starters).
If patent law were an easy problem to solve, it would have been solved.