I don't disagree it's a common viewpoint, I'm just saying it's not very useful to call every NPE a patent troll. It lumps universities together with companies that seek nuisance settlements using the cost of litigation as leverage.
In general, the law allows you to sell your cause of action to someone else. For example, many investors who had suits against big banks over mortgage-backed securities sold their causes of action to funds that could bring them efficiently in one go. That's just property rights in action. At least in theory, it's more efficient to allow rights of action to be sold like property.
Now, maybe you think that these sorts of suits shouldn't be brought at all. There's arguments to be made for that. But in that case, I think you need to lump companies like Apple in with companies like these.
No, not really. If they developed they technology and are trying to license it, and suing people that don't license it... That is not a troll. That is someone who is doing exactly what patents were meant to do... Patents we're meant to encourage people to invent.
You are confusing patents with copyright. Patents were meant to encourage people to disclose. It was taken for granted that people will invent things regardless of patent protection - they will just keep their inventions trade secrets.
Depends on the industry; there are plenty of places where trade secrets aren't viable (e.g. medicinal chemistry, where it's trivial to reverse engineer a drug).
Meta-comments[1] explaining that the conversation above isn't useful aren't useful. They take the focus off of the real debate -- that which people choose to talk about in the comment thread. Ignoring comments is easy.
proceeds to take own advice
[1]: such as this one, but this wouldn't be necessary if folks didn't find it necessary to waste space dictating what's worth talking about.
A patent troll only uses patents to sue people and return money to it's investors.
So, I think there is a reasonable argument that if your actively doing research your not really a NPE. AMD and University's both make money from both obvious and non obvious patents but they have positive contributions where companies that only buy existing patents and sue don't contribute anything as the patents already exist.
If universities can't manage to exist in the US off the 70 billion the feds spend on tuition support, or by snagging a share of the 150 billion the US government spend on research, let them die.
In general, the law allows you to sell your cause of action to someone else. For example, many investors who had suits against big banks over mortgage-backed securities sold their causes of action to funds that could bring them efficiently in one go. That's just property rights in action. At least in theory, it's more efficient to allow rights of action to be sold like property.
Now, maybe you think that these sorts of suits shouldn't be brought at all. There's arguments to be made for that. But in that case, I think you need to lump companies like Apple in with companies like these.