IMHO What's needed is a) a good way of measuring usage and b) a realistic attitude on the part of patent holders as to the value of their patents.
A good example of how not to do it is the current mess that governs the music indistry (which very similar problems with copying and incorporation of material [sampling] all be it in a context of copyright rather than patents).
Ted Nelson did a lot of work on this for xanadu and his ideas on transcopyright are worth exploring further.
One interesting (but maybe off-topic) facet of client-side applets (a la Java) is the fact that publishers can define proprietary protocols and file formats, and change them as often as they want, giving a sort of minimal protection against casual duplication and re-publishing. With a bit more work, the formats could make true transclusions efficient and easy to apply, and help increase the amount of serious/commercial information available to the public. This is nothing new, I suppose... Java (from a user point of view) isn't that much different than IntelligentPad, which from what I understand was the client system the Xanadu people were working with recently. -- Jay Campbell - Regional Operations Manager -=-=-=-=-=-=- Sense Networking (Santa Cruz Node) edge@got.net "Shoot the Fruit Loop" "On the Information Superhighway, I'm the guy behind you in this morning's traffic jam leaning on his horn."