I don't understand why we can't just make patents non transferable. If you company gets bought, your patents go away. Small companies still have protection but trolls disappear. You still do have the IBM approach to "patent all the things" but that can also be addressed by forcing patents to have to be actively deployed in a public way or they expire after a year or something.
> I don't understand why we can't just make patents non transferable.
Because inventors want to invent things, not prosecute patents, and making patents transferrable allows them to make money from inventions without having to accept any of the headache of patent defense, which is a distraction even when (as you will practically need to) you hire counsel to do the actual legal work.
