As well as reforming the rules under which a patent is granted, we should also double the pay of patent examiners, then make them professionally part-liable for court costs arising from the granting of illegitimate monopolies in the form of invalid patents.
This is a terrible idea. If you read the AMA from the patent examiner on reddit, he described that an shitty patent passes because, even though its obvious to the examiner, they can't mark it as bad unless there is prior art that they can find. They can't conduct exhaustive searches for these prior arts and if they can't find prior art then they have to validate the patent.
We need to change the system from the ground up. Not start to make liable some poor fella who happens to work at the USPTO who would have no idea that a legitimate patent would cause a multi-million dollar case.
That's why you have to change the rules first. It should require a much higher level of innovation to qualify for patent protection. And if we are going to grant temporary monopolies, then there should be the relevant resources to keep the system honest, otherwise it is just massive economic friction.
The idea of part-liability for examiners on costs is so that the liability of a particular examiner is limited and is decided in the court and covered by professional insurance, much like an architect, so it is not going to bankrupt you, but getting too many of them could ruin your career and it is automatically on public record.
