“We need a system of dedicated patent courts staffed from a pool of judges and juries who actually understand this stuff.”
We do, it is called the Patent and Trademark Office. If one government agency sucks there is no hope of creating another that won’t be just as bad.
I wasn’t thinking of creating a new court system, just changing the one we have so it can better deal with patents.
And yes, the USPTO needs to change too. First, Congress could stop taking its funds so it can hire more and better examiners. I don’t mind that extra government growth, as their function was directly authorized by the Constitution (at least the patent half was).
Then make it harder for corporations to beat up on those poor examiners using the court system whenever a patent is rejected. Given the history of discussion over the copyright/patent clause in the Constitution, the more correct thing to do is err on the side of rejecting too many patents that might have been valid, rather than approving too many that were not valid.