You say potato .... The "reward for risk-taking and sharing knowledge" is a nice story, and sometimes it even matches the reality. But all too often it's a malign fantasy. That's especially true given that it's been a long time since patent filings were a significant channel for disseminating new knowledge. (How often do people look up patent filings when researching how to do something?)

Source: In an earlier career phase, I was a partner in one of the U.S.'s biggest IP-litigation boutique law firms. I spent a good deal of my time representing tech companies you've definitely heard of, busting bullshit patents that were being asserted against them by people who naively imagined — or cynically insisted — that they'd come up with Something Really Great and had their hands out looking for a huge, undeserved payday. "Nice little business you have there — it'd be a pity if a court granted a permanent injunction that put you out of business."

The incentives and legal structure are all in favor of filing patent applications on everything you can think of and seeing what you can wheedle out of an overworked patent examiner — then after your patent is issued, you go hunting to see what you can get from companies in the way of settlement deals to pay you to go away. By no means are all patents this way, but it happens often enough to be a problem.

That's why Congress passed legislation such as the amendment establishing "IPRs," inter partes reviews. Those are essentially a way to have a three-judge panel within the USPTO take a fresh look at a challenged patent's validity. They're contested proceedings where the challenger gets to introduce evidence and make arguments.