That's well and good too--excepting the fact that the free market already does this, and at the rate the patent system/legal system move, the deck is utterly stacked against the pioneers unless they've got gigantic money behind them.

And since software has such low barriers to entry, this really does not help progress.

It says "may" not "shall" though, so to the extent it's not doing the job, it can (and should) be reworked.