How much would it cost?

The public key crypto development was funded by universities. Of course they would have done so without patents.
Or are there patents on the Higgs boson math that I don't know about? Or the quantum theory? Theory of relativity?
No, it's all public. And they've choosen to make it public for the advancement of science and for the good of the public.

RSA was just patented by the people who was the last ones in the line to get it working.

Better schemes can only be developed if the patents make sense. And no sane person would use crypto that havn't been audited anyway. I also dare to say that the publication of patents don't have any value until the last year before their expiration anyway.

"The evidence completely disagrees. Public key crypto is still widely used in Internet commerce. Go read up on SSL, HTTPS, etc. "
Can you prove that was because of the patents - or was it because of their expiration?
(I guess you know they aren't valid today, and I guess you also know at what rate the use of the crypto have been increasing...)

In reality, the patents don't disclose anything, they are almost always vague descriptions of a concept.
The RSA patent application might have made sense (included algorithms, etc), but that alone don't prove that software patents are good.

And another problem is that to figure out a better method based on that patent, you have to to a bunch of research that by itself could get you sued.
In reality, the publication of patents are worthless until it's last year before expiration.

"Either way, those patents did very little, if anything, to enable e-commerce."
"The evidence completely disagrees. Public key crypto is still widely used in Internet commerce. Go read up on SSL, HTTPS, etc."
I'd say that the RSA patent did nothing new. The fact that the algorithm is used today, after the patents expiration, doesn't mean that the patent did anything good.
And who says RSA was the first public key crypto? (Probably it was the first usable one, though)

As far as I know, the GPL and a few other license has patent clauses.

I know a case in the US (rail raod related, you've might have heard about it) where a software develoåer were sued over a patent.

They found out that the patentee had been using that software, and since it was covered by the GPL, it effectively meant that he had approved of the patent clause, meaning that anybody could use it since the license says that to use GPL software that your patents cover, you must license out your patent for free according to the GPL's terms.

If only there was enough people that had the time and education to be able to review al those patent applications...

Lengthy posts are GOOD!
Too bad you can't give more details.

I can't understand how anybody could promote patents for any other reason than being misled about them or as a patent troll (I dare to include the patent laywers here as well).