Another depressing year for patent law?

In a post The 4 worst patents of 2015, Larry Downes writes



This was another depressing year for patent law, which long ago lost sight of its constitutional moorings as a balanced and limited source of incentives for innovators. Though Congress, the courts and the Patent and Trademark Office each tried in their own way to rein in a system widely-regarded as out of control, in the end nobody made much progress.



As to the text


On just one day in November, for example, over 200 new patent lawsuits were filed, as plaintiffs rushed to beat a change in federal procedure that could require more specific claims. Most were from companies that buy up patents of dubious quality and use them to extract nuisance settlements from actual innovators.



the filings were done in anticipation of the demise of "Form 18" from the removal of the "appendix of forms" in which form 18 resided.

There is mention of


The mismatch between expanding patent coverage and the quickening pace of disruptive change has become one of the greatest sources of danger to the innovation economy.



but the evidence seems to reside in the issuance of four bad patents, rather than in a more thorough analysis.