The biggest problem here is the transaction costs. If the costs to get and enforce patents were much much lower (time, money, opportunity cost), then patents would be really good. Only the large corporations have enough cash to enforce patents successfully.
I'm not sure that's the case. I think if patents were cheaper to get and enforce, people would patent more trivial things and sue each other far more often. Look at copyright enforcement as practices by the RIAA and Righthaven.
What really needs to be cheaper and easier is getting invalid patents overturned.
