I wish more people would remember that a patent is supposed to be compensation for publishing, because that's supposed to be a win for society over having an invention live and die as a trade secret. But there is no market force ensuring the price of licensing a patent is less than the cost of having each competitor in the industry independently re-create the invention. Too often it's just rent-seeking on the straightforward solution any skilled practitioner would have reached, once they got around to considering the problem.