What exactly is the problem with patent trolls? Someone made an invention and wants to profit from it, and not every inventor is good at starting and running a business. Besides in quite a few business sectors the barriers of entry are too high to be able to monetize an invention from scratch. You see the exact same with lawyers, accountants, etc. Companies specialize in those specific tasks so they can be good at what they do, and other businesses hire them to simplify their own.
As I see it the problems are that patents are granted on ridiculous things, every new type of digital device comes with a slew of patents that basically replicate everything that can be done with a computer, and in biology patents are granted on DNA simply for finding it in a creature, not for actually designing it. That is one thing that should be solved, the other thing that should be fixed are the damages awarded by courts. For a phone or software product with 10000 features any single one shouldn't be worth much more than a ten thousandth of the price.
Your second paragraph seems to answer the question posed in the first one. If patent trolls actually produced nonobvious inventions and infringers were mostly copiers instead of independent inventors, then patent trolls would not be much of a problem.
As I see it the problems are that patents are granted on ridiculous things, every new type of digital device comes with a slew of patents that basically replicate everything that can be done with a computer, and in biology patents are granted on DNA simply for finding it in a creature, not for actually designing it. That is one thing that should be solved, the other thing that should be fixed are the damages awarded by courts. For a phone or software product with 10000 features any single one shouldn't be worth much more than a ten thousandth of the price.