It's a government-created problem, and ultimately must be solved by them also. It's ridiculous that companies have to resort to this.

It doesn't solve the problem of getting sued by a troll -- what patent are you going to use to counter-sue a business that doesn't have any business?

There is some good news though. Recent court cases (Alice, etc.) are really cramping the trolls' style. Intellectual Ventures and the like are backing away from the troll model because their crappy software patents are getting invalidated in court left and right.

This solution works, but it's far from ideal - the trade of equity for protection (or rather: access to their arsenal) could be unappealing to startups without much equity to hand-over in the first place - given a $1m lawsuit (which might cost $1m to defend against), or giving up $1m of equity for access to counter-suit weapons (with no guarantee of success - and also probably costing $1m to file anyway).