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Originally Posted by geekmaster
Do you mean the sock gnomes who steal stockings from the laundry, leaving only mismatched pairs of socks?
A "patent troll" is a company (usually a law firm with NO clients and an EMPTY office) that does not produce any product, but makes all their money buying up huge numbers of "useless" patents and suing recently successful companies using crap from their patent portfolio that is "somewhat" like what the successful company did.
They commonly file their lawsuits from a county in Texas USA where the judge gets a portion of the "profits" and will always decide in favor of the patent troll. Big companies usually just pay the patent trolls a big pile of money to go away for awhile. Basically, it is just an "extortion racket"...
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Well, I apologize, I actually thought you were joking. Although your "patent troll" sounds a lot like the underwear gnomes, they were from an episode of a TV series and they stole kids underwear. They had a "three part plan" in which they had only figured out steps 1 and 3 which were 1. Steal Underwear and 3. Make Profit, never having a viable step 2 in process.
It is interesting your mention of "not making any product." I read, and I could be quoting a completely false source, that 2011 was the first year in the history of commerce where the sales of "intangible" products in the consumer quarter was greater than that of "tangibles." There was a long article about the changes face of the economy and such. I was skeptical. If you think about such sales as homes and cars, both being large ticket items, it is hard to believe that things such as Netflix combined with other things of that nature could win out. However, I did also consider that cellphone service, internet, satellite/cable service and the standards of insurance and medical treatment, it is very possible that the claim is correct.