It's very hard for individual inventors to get paid. For the same reason that private equity is valuable - broadly, that's a good thing - in the case of patents, many that own them aren't in a good position to take the next step.

It's really hard to compete with Apple on pure coolness, and if you do, you're probably going to use some of the things they pioneered.

In the early days of the software industry, people cared about copyright and didn't give a damn about patents - they copied each other willy-nilly.

Nathan Myhrvold Quotes