I do however believe it is in need of reform, particularly in certain fields where it does the opposite of fostering development it restricts it. For example patents that are held for the sole reason of preventing development or companies that buy patents simply to sue others for using something similar.
Exactly, I can think of a few cases when Nvidia was just sitting on new developments and technologies, simply because their current tech was "good enough" and AMD couldn't do anything cause that technology was under patent.