"If I say the word patent troll, does any company or any entity come to mind in particular?" Laura Sydell asked Pete Peter Detkin — the former tech company lawyer who coined the term — in "When Patents Attack!" an episode of "This American Life" which aired over the summer.
"Patent troll" is a derogatory term that refers to companies that create little more than vague patents for future technology. When another company — the kind that makes things — builds something that fits a "troll's" patent, the "troll" files for copyright infringement.
It happens all the time. Companies earn millions of dollars doing it. The biggest so-called patent troll — the one that first comes to Detkin's mind — is Intellectual Ventures.
IV founder Nathan Myhrvold — who used to be chief technology officer at Microsoft — described his company differently to "This American Life": "Intellectual Ventures is a company that invests in invention." (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBCUniversal.)
Rather than allowing one's soul to be crushed by the knowledge that such companies operate within the laws of these United States, Troll the Troll will take your $9 so it can do what it's name implies — another tech in-joke from Nathan Tone, the Puckish techie also behind the fashion line, Mark by Mark Zuckerberg.
Troll the Troll, "harassing intellectual ventures with troll dolls since, well, last week," will, for the the modest "donation" of $9, "package and ship a troll doll to intellectual ventures."
Then what happens? "Intellectual Ventures frowns. We smile."
Sounds like a business plan! Here's hoping no one's holding a patent on literal trolling ...
Troll the Troll via TechCrunch
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Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about the Internet. Tell her to get a real job on Twitter and/or Facebook. Also, Google+.