This was written by someone who knows nothing about patent law. Sorry, but it's just a parroting of the zeitgeist, like they've hired someone from arstechnica or techcrunch to write the article.
Never mind the real statistics, that 90% of patent judges say they've never seen a patent troll and don't believe they exist. Never mind that patents take years and generally tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to obtain. Never mind that "sketchy patents" if such exists, get invalidated by courts when found.
No, much easier to say that non-inventors are pretending to be inventors, writing fuzzy abstracts that somehow pass the muster of tens of lawyers and engineers tasked with finding fault in them before approval, and then these magically savvy charlatans can convince multiple judges and an entire jury body that they invented the wheel in 2010. No, it just doesn't pass your, my, or anyone's sniff test. What is happening is that bankrupted inventors are forced to sue to get royalties because big companies know they don't have to pay anyone ever and the legal system won't do anything about it. That's what's hampering invention--the knowledge that if you mortgage your house to finance a lab in your garage, the fruits of that sacrifice will be stolen by someone in silicon valley if not China, and there will be nothing you can do about it besides starve under a gag order.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
