I do hear you; but that's a bit of gray area for me. Being the little guy myself, sounds sweat. But: did you read the Westinghouse bio blurb? Anyway, this is only addressing trolls, and beyond that it smells a bit like addressing structural issues in society via a tangent.

(also: I have no problem at all with Google patenting page-rank, for example.)

I think a fine goal is to minimize frivolous litigation. And one key requirement there is that bogus patents are minimized. Us geeks on the internets are actually in a position to provide both (a) a positive service to society and (b) address the bogus-patent-mill aka USPTO's apparent difficulty in establishing prior art and recognizing the patently obvious.

We need something along the line of a wiki + hn.forum (tech-know quality of members) + APIs. The API is for USPTO and their examiners :)

One issue is confidentiality. If someone can crack the problem of (a) maintaing the confidential subject matter and (b) providing a tool for a USPTO examiner to quickly scan the collective knowledge base, then concerned Geeks can step in and make sure USPTO stops issuing stupid patents.

(Low tech options: taking the Einstein way and instead of interning at GoldmanSachs, the bright young thing takes a tour of duty at dear USGov and does some robust patent examining .. [edit] or tie it to Federal student loan packages.)