The lawyers in this country are rapidly developing an IP market. "You want to sell a touchpad? I can license you these 12 patents for only $10,000 per 1000 units up to 200,000 units, and then the price goes down to $6,000 per." And the scary part about that is that Congress probably views the creation of a market as a good thing! Free Market economy blah blah this, market forces and efficiencies blah blah that. But when it comes to patents, each one is like a little micro-monopoly. So it's not like device manufacturers can shop around (as the word "market" would imply) for the most cost-effective patent. Instead, they are forced to buy all patents in effect for their product, or get shut out of the market. And the worst of it is, these patent aggregators probably coerce tech companies into selling or sharing patents to them in exchange for lower royalty fees on other patents on which they claim those tech companies infringe. "Hey Samsung. Your TV infringes on our patent. We'll sell you a license for $20 per unit, or if you transfer patents 1, 2, and 3 to us with an unlimited lifetime license to you, we'll sell those other licenses to you for $1 per unit."
I'm getting angry just thinking about what this is doing. It's like blackmail, but legitimized and turned into a business model and market space. Go US Congress. Good job.