Yes, fix the patent system

That's throwing out the baby with the bathwater. There's some fields where patents, or something similar to it, seem needed. Namely fields where there's high research-costs, and *low* copy-costs. Nobody would shoulder the research-costs, if upon completion their competitors immediately just copy the results.

But software is not such a field. It's expensive to produce software, true. But copyright already gives -more- than adequate protection for the result. (indeed even that probably gives too much as in you could give significantly less protection and NOT see a significant release in development-effort)