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Originally Posted by Giggleton
On the surface it does appear that patent trolls and copyright holders are different but I am still not quite sure. For instance, you say the patent troll prevents others from implementing an idea, wouldn't Stephen King's copyright holdings prevent someone from implementing an idea (copying King's work) that Stephen King had and filed at the copyright office years earlier?
What I mean is why is literature so different than a technological invention?
Every day we make choices.
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Short version: Non trolls aim to make a product, trolls aim to sue and settle.
Longer version: Patents are supposed to exist to protect R&D investment by companies and individuals to give them a time limited monopoly to possibly make back their investment and profit from the idea.
That works on the assumption that when you file a patent you're going to actually build a product that uses it. If you do that, there's a benefit to consumers in either trivial or major ways (depending on the product).
Patent trolls have no intentions of ever building a product. They buy up patents that are often so obvious it's surprising they were ever granted then proceed to sue everyone remotely using a similar method in the hopes they'll all settle rather than going to court. If they settle, troll makes money, if they go to court, troll probably has their patent overturned for been too general/obvious/prior art...
One thing people forget with these discussions though, is that just because a patent seems obvious it doesn't mean the company using it is a troll. When people say Amazon, Apple, Google, MS are trolls for fighting patent wars, that's not really accurate. They at least have products that use those patents. In their cases it's often the fault of the patent office for allowing general/overly broad/obvious patents to be granted, but I wouldn't consider them trolls, unlike many of the non-product companies who's sole purpose is to sue and settle as many times as they can in patent friendly states.
To go back to your question, Stephen king has a product. Not only that, copyright doesn't stop you writing about similar things, it just prevents copying/derivative works. You're free to write about a school or wizards or an epic battle involving dwarves, humans and elves so long as your star wizard isn't a clone/derivative of Harry Potter and your races are not lifted from Tolkien.