patenting ideas

Just a thought - watching kids building "throw-away" houses like crazy in Sims2.

What if - design a Sims-like environment in which houses' energy consumption is an environment factor, and - design elements could be tested against climate, or other variables could be controlled for.

For example, what if, in designing the house, one could compare the energy efficiency of roofs: asphalt shingles vs cedar shake vs standing seam steel (and make running several seasons worth variations against a range of color choices - similarly for siding ...).

Perhaps we could get some schools offering video gaming design programs to work with software vendors like EA to open source (or otherwise provide certified teaching institutions with access to programming) their game engine logic.

I wanted to write this down, because I was reminded that at the same time Bb sued D2L, I was reading Accelerando by Charles Stross, and in it, one of the characters gets up each morning, patents half a dozen ideas, grants their use to a free-use patent holding organization (for which donations he gains capital in the reputation economy), and moves on with his day. (Free downloads of the book: http://www.accelerando.org/). It'd be nice if in the world of patenting ideas, there were an organization that tracked those ideas that reasonably informed practioners could anticipate and therefore prevent patent trolls from amassing idea capital.