The whole thing is broken
It doesn't take much to see that the whole patent system is broken. The cycle of invention to usefulness of an idea is shorter these days, but the greed of the manufacturers means they are fighting for longer times before inventions pass in to the public domain.
The patent office are allowing designs of specific devices where generic devices of various designs already exist (the Apple patent of an in-car charger design was a brilliant example) and the consequence is very nasty for the consumer.
There needs to be a test on a patent based on the perceived life span of the product.
The whole issue of what is, and is not, fair, needs to be re-examined. Fair to the creator of the idea/device and also fair to society as a whole. The system as it is at present, just doesn't take proper account of different product life cycles and also interdependency ... resistive touch screens, for example, already run on the basis of the idea of a surface being able to be touched. Who is going to cough up for that?
I don't think I'd like to be one of the supreme court judges, though.
I would like to see a law which requires patent holders to enforce their patents, so that they can't wait until a competitor becomes profitable before launching an attack, and that they can't pick and choose who to prossecute ... come one, come all.