&gt; You&#x27;re making a tough claim here.. You&#x27;re not just saying that the system can be improved but you&#x27;re saying that software patents are holding back innovation. How would you go about proving that?<p>That&#x27;s not a tough claim that needs proven, it&#x27;s an obvious observable fact to every programmer in the industry.  We can&#x27;t write software without violating tons of patents these days, idiotic patents issued by ignorant people who don&#x27;t understand the absurdity of the claims being made. Patent trolls, of which we are overflowing with, hold back innovation and they are a direct byproduct of an obviously broken badly designed patent system.<p>&gt; I prefer to stick to a more reasonable claim: the system is not broken, it has a few flaws, such as those that enable the existence of non-practicing entities.<p>It&#x27;s broken.