Its a Catch-22
In the first page of the article, all of the examples are physical products that were patented.
Airplanes, Turbine engines, Hoovercraft and the infamous Dysons which are now worthless because of quality control issues and cheap manufacturing. (Sorry Dyson...)
But I digress.
Today's issues are less about patenting physical objects, but the patenting of business processes and such.
A shopping cart for a web site? Really? Design of a screen layout and what a swipe or gesture means? Again, Really?
The point is that software patents are being given out when the idea isn't really novel, unique or worthy of a patent. IMHO, this has to stop.
With respect to patent trolls, its a slippery slope.
First, a patent has value. Its intellectual property. Its considered an asset and is treated as such. It can be bartered, sold, and licensed. So as an asset, you have the legal right to protect that asset.
You can't just remove the right of anyone who owns a patent, to protect the value of the asset against infringement. (Oracle bought Sun which owned Java. Google allegedly copied Java to get out of paying royalties on Java ME. Doesn't Oracle have the right to sue Google?)
The point is that legitimate companies can buy and sell companies and their assets, or just buy the asset and have the legitimate right to protect the asset.
So, how do you define a patent troll?
Merely having a portfolio of patents doesn't make one a troll.
Merely protecting your assets doesn't make one a patent troll.
Its when the patent holder abuses the court system and uses it to blackmail litigants in to settling because its cheaper than fighting it out in a protracted court battle.
There is a company that just settled with the NY State's Attorney and has to refund any monies gained from their lawsuits against New Yorkers and an agreement to never sue anyone in NY again over these patents.
Its at the point that the patent holder becomes a vexatious litigant that they should be tossed from the courts.
We saw this in a group of lawyers who sued people on copyright infringement over porn distributed via bit torrent. Only the lawyer owned the company purported to own the copyrights to the porn... (or something like that.)
I'm not trying to condone patent trolling. Far from it.
I'm just trying to point out that the problem is harder than you'd think and that while it would take a judge to rule that the trolls are along the lines of a vexatious litigant, we also need to stop the bogus 'Business Process' and Software patents from being created in the first place.