Re: So, I'm in two minds...
Making a product does not cause patent litigation. Making a profit does. You are safe until you have enough money to make it worth the trolls' effort to come out of their bridges. Once you have money, patents are no protection from trolls. The whole idea of selling patents to trolls is that they do not make anything but legal threats, and so do not infringe any patents. (For some strange reason, lawyers believe that the copious benefits of the patent system apply to every profession except their own, so the law is not patentable.)
Next up patenting your invention costs money. Patent lawyers frequently advise spending money on patent lawyers until you are bankrupt, then the patents can be bought from remains of your company for a pittance by trolls. Pretend you have a bottomless pit of money that means you survive until you get the patent, and someone infringes it. You can now demand royalties. If you make anything, you will get counter sued for patent infringement, and your cheapest option is to cross license. If you are a troll, it is important to sue everyone. Some of them will be dumb enough to pay up without a fight, and you use that income to pester richer victims.
If you have a USP that no-one else can copy, then you do not need a patent. A patent only helps if someone else does copy. You then cease manufacture / sell to a troll, then spend millions and wait years for a court ruling. To succeed with a patent it must be obvious. Journals do not print the obvious because their readers know it already. This means there won't be prior art unless someone has patented it already, and as it is so obvious, it will not take long for someone to infringe.
If you have something good, make it, sell it, then sell the company to venture capitalists (VC = someone who buys an operating cash cow, then fires the developers). Let the VC deal with trolls while you sell version 2 from the new company you set up with the proceeds of the sale.