Patent Foundation (Score 1)

Perhaps a solution would be to form a non-profit foundation which could solicit patents and funding from concerned individuals and foundations, and apply for broad, 'silly' patents on ideas itself. Armed with a library of such patents, we could make them available through a variety of general public licence which enabled companies to use them to do the obvious things they covered in exchange for avoiding irresponsible abuse of the patent system themselves. The foundation would also have teeth to pursue offenders by suing them for infringement of foundation patents and by funding and centralizing searches for prior art.