Presumably, judges need to assume that granted patents are valid and defensible. On the other hand, Eastern Texas probably gets a good amount of revenue from allowing this sort of nonsense to be litigated.

Is the court system really a profit centre for the state?

That's about the only reason I can think of for why they handle such a striking amount of patent lawsuits.

I don't know if it's feasible, but I would say that they should be much more selective in what kind of patents are granted, both ruling out the more frivolous patents, and also trying harder to confirm that there's no prior art (perhaps through peer review as in science). The costs for this should be for the applicant of the patent.

Clearly, you don't see the slippery slope from:

Clearly, there are real patent violations that occur and need stopped

to

so many ones that benefit only trolls and attorneys

By design, patents are not to protect invention, they are a form of neo-feudalism. There is no such thing as a good patent, not by any rational definition of "good."

Of course there are good patents!

Any invention that is a result of targeted time- or resource-consuming research is worthy of a patent protection, which specifically exists to allow an inventor recoup his costs by not letting others to blindly copy the product once it hits the market.

No product of human thought is "worthy" of using brute violence in preventing another human from having the same thought, or from using that thought to build and sell something useful. You have no right to bind down your fellow human beings merely because you stamp your feet whining "but I thought of it first!"

Patents are tyranny, and they are only justifiable on the moral reasoning of a two-year-old.

Right, because the civil legal system means you're going to jail if you don't comply! It's not a system where the loser goes to jail, don't pass go, don't collect $200.

Libertarians crack me up. They're more disconnected from reality than the people they accuse of the same. The issue with the patent system as it is now is not the entire system, but rather the shortcomings of its implementation.

Point of fact: you do go to jail if you don't do what is commanded.

Another point of fact: sarcasm and sneering are not an argument.

I'm no lawyer, but I do not believe it's possible, or at least it's highly unlikely that somebody would go to jail should they not pay up in a patent case ruling against them. If anything you'll have your assets seized and you'll file bankruptcy and that's the end of that. Pretty shitty, yes, but far from getting sent to jail.

Yes, my post was sarcastic, but at least I'm rooted in reality instead of speaking in pure conjecture and hypothesis. There was more to my comment than just sarcasm, though you chose to ignore it and instead continue with the rhetoric.

Tell it to the pharmaceutical companies. Patent protection is what, essentially, allows this industry to exist.