To be more particular, on account of about half-a-dozen factors [1], it now costs a fortune to defend or prosecute any civil action in any American non-small-claims court. So getting dragged into court, even over a complaint that's ridiculous on its face, is a real threat. You could be down $50k, $100k, or more, before that ridiculous complaint is dismissed. (And that's if you're lucky.)
Believe it or not, a conceptually similar patent system works very well in China, where it costs just a few thousand bucks to get in front of a judge and where being a vexatious litigant is frowned upon.
[1]- (1) There are no, or very limited, penalties for filing complaints that are later dismissed, even en masse and even when those complaints are truly without merit. (2) Unlike small claims court, a corporation's engineers or executives can't defend the corporation pro se in patent court, so they must hire lawyers who will bill hourly. (3) The pretrial phase tends to last two years, and "discovery" is crushingly onerous and expensive. (4) The civil justice system is designed to favor voluntary settlements -- it intentionally makes going to trial more difficult and expensive than it needs to be -- but in patent cases this unfortunately means that dragging businesses into court is profitable in precisely the same way that a mob racket is profitable. (5) Judges are never technical experts so they can easily be hoodwinked by savvy plaintiffs, and proceedings that should be dismissed early are often wrongly allowed to proceed.
...I could go on, but you get the idea.
