Re: How to fix the patent process
There should be no need to "make it unattractive" to patent anything.
The job of the Patent Office is not to grant patents, it is to control whether or not a patent can be granted. To do so, it has one control and one control only - prior art.
Given that the Patent Office is no longer controlling prior art and has resorted to granting patents willy-nilly (possibly in exchange for cashbacks or undeclared "bonuses"), it has clearly ceased to fulfill its primary function and must be dissolved.
A new body should be set up and a new mandate implemented for managing patent application. Personally, I would prefer that no one from the previous organization be included in the new one. Blindingly obviously, the new mandate must be official, publicly sanctioned and relentlessly enforced. Legally, there should be a "grace period" while ALL existing patents are re-examined and their validity controlled by the new mandate.
Hopefully, it will result in a massive dumping of all vaguely-worded, non-reproducible or otherwise incomprehensible patents that have stuffed the system, as well as the immediate invalidation of all patents that offer no actual method of implementation other than a drawing made on the back of a handkerchief on a restaurant table.
That done, we will once again, as a civilization, be able to progress with things that are truly useful and innovative, and not just a useless encyclopaedia of every single technical tidbit some busybody has been able to throw on a paper before anyone else did.
A patent should be granted exclusively for something that improves human technology - i.e. that improves the available technology for ALL HUMANKIND - and is fully described to be completely reproducible. Anything else is useless and should be discarded.