> And there's no issue with mens rea here, since patent trolls aren't doing anything illegal.
No. They aren't doing anything illegal. They're doing something evil.
Mens rea is the mental state of doing evil. Not everything evil is illegal - for various reasons, some good and some bad. But the mental state is the same.
Your enormous shiftiness around this issue demonstrates clear mens rea. In short, you know you're a bad boy.
Mass murder is evil. Graft is evil. Your industry doesn't involve mass murder. It's just a big graft scheme, that's all. It's not Hitler. But it's still evil, like Hitler.
> But it has nothing to do with whether people should follow groupthink without the capacity to determine whether it's right or wrong.
Anyone is entitled to be right for any reason at all. You're simply trying to restrict the number of your enemies.
Besides, you're missing something here. You make a living sending rockets up. We live where the rockets come down.
The existence of rocket impacts is purely conjectural to you - so you can call it "groupthink." It's a shared reality for us. It's not groupthink that the sky is blue.
Your profession nominally exists to serve our interests. In fact, it serves to suck our blood - when it isn't filling up our days with worthless bullshit. All genuine innovators, at least in our field, despise your rule with a passion. I'm sure many of them would be quite happy to see the entire patent bar in prison, or at least collectively disbarred.
> Indeed, this would have to come from Congress. But it could certainly happen.
No. You miss my point. Not even Congress could do it. If Congress passed a law, the patent bar would simply work around it and continue its present practices.
In other words, the American voter has exactly the same power over the patent industry that the German voter had over Hitler. Ie, at a first approximation, none.
> Is there a single industrialized country that has no patent system whatsoever? That's a serious question... I don't know of one.
Germany before 1877. China now. (Yes, I know nominally China has a patent system, but nobody in China gives a shit about US patents.)
There is only one "industrialized country" today, the US, because every other "country" in the world today unthinkingly adopts whatever comes out of WIPO's derriere. Alas, ruling the world doesn't mean your turds are made of gold - though I'm sure it's been quite golden for you.