It is not a perfect world. Tankers spill oil. Innocent people land in jail. Bad calls cost the home team a championship. And as almost anyone in the intellectual-property game will tell you, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office continues to grant patents that are, well, patently invalid. I'm talking about patents for things that have either already been invented or are so straightforward and apparent they don't meet the patent's law requirements for being novel and nonobvious.

For years, people have griped about these bogus patent claims. Rightfully so, since firms shell out millions in needless licensing fees as a result. And the patent office has long promised to do better. But now two Web-based ventures, IP.com and BountyQuest, are taking their own steps to rein in bad patents-either by stopping them before they are granted or by knocking them out after the fact. What makes these startups really interesting is that they are attracting support across a broad spectrum of intellectual-property players-from patent system boosters to open-source programmers. In the polarized IP field, that is no small feat.