One useful thing groups of people can do is keep track of what’s callled “prior art” — evidence that an idea someone decided to patent is actually not a new idea.
The whole patent and “intellectual property” system is a big bucket of worms — flesh eating worms, mind you — and anyone who tries to start a small business with a new idea is apt to find that some idea has been patented, often quietly, and the patent held by “patent troll” operations that wait until someone builds up a business then leaps in to assert they have a patent and are owed money.
Old timers will recall Arc Flashlight’s story, which has apparently been airbrushed away from where I read it on a formerly valuable flashlight website — the only fragment I now find is this one where someone commented
The history is out there somewhere, but it really doesn’t matter in particular.
More to the point — staying aware of good ideas that people bring up in public and share can be helpful.
Check out how the software folks have kept ideas available when someone tried to lock them up with patents and charge whoever used them — long after the ideas were thought up and put into use.
http://www.google.com/search?q=patent+troll+“prior+art”
While I know topics like this can get contentious, I hope this doesn’t. Point is — good ideas disappear from the web sometimes. You can hope to find them at the Internet Archive.