Here’s a law that actually looks pretty good:

Stop patent trolls. Support the Innovation Act of 2013.

The text of the law is a bloated bulk at 51 pages, far too much for me to bother to try to slog through, so it may well be loaded with crap. But assuming this summary is correct, it has some good points:

• Heightened Pleading: The bill requires patent holders to provide basic details (such as which patents and claims are at issue, as well as what products allegedly infringe and how) when it files a lawsuit.
• Fee shifting: The bill allows for a court to require the loser in a patent case to pay the winning side’s fees and costs. This makes it harder for trolls to use the extraordinary expense of patent litigation to force a settlement.
• Transparency: The bill includes strong language requiring patent trolls to reveal the parties that would actually benefit from the litigation (called the real party in interest). Also, if the plaintiff is a shell-company patent troll, the defendant could require the real party in interest to join the litigation, forcing them to pay up if the patent troll can’t or won’t pay.
• Staying customer suits: The bill requires courts to stay patent litigation against customers (such as a café using an off-the-shelf router to provide Wi-Fi) when there is parallel litigation against the manufacturer.