Patent trolls come in all shapes and sizes, from this particular company to Apple to IBM to Google. It all stems from the same basic flaw that has plagued development in the past 30 years - the US patent system, and most specifically process patents.
The US patent office, in defiance to just about any child who grew up in the past 200 years, issued a process patent to a claimant for swinging on a swing sideways. http://www.google.com/patents/US6368227 — this patent was applied for in 2000, and awarded in 2002.
Now thankfully they’ve not filed infringement suits against those who permit blatant theft of their intellectual property (IE most school and park playgrounds.) Steven Olsen filed for this patent to demonstrate how broken our patent system is; he obviously did not invent it, was not the first to swing sideways on a swing.
Thousands of patents are awarded under the process system that utilize just the same common concepts, and they are unfortunately awarded. And as most companies would rather not spend half a billion dollars in legal fees defending these lawsuits, the trolls get fed, big and small.
I’d feel for Samsung and Apple over this issue, but they’ve benefitted from the same creature that they’re being sued by.
And to be honest, at this point, I’m not sure which would be best to fix first - the courts by requiring permission from Congress for any federal court to award a judgment of more than $25,000 (one possible solution), or the wholesale slaughter of inventions covered by the patent office.
Both are utterly out of control. Both need to desperately be reigned in, and I honestly think that the first and foremost to control is the courts; if the trolls (or anyone else for that matter) couldn’t go seize massive assets through the federal court system, there’d be little reason for troll companies to exist in the first place.
Besides, these troll companies are going to sue the feds for billions if they gut their troll portfolios, so I guess it would be best to start with the courts.
A year and four months after being stupidly granted in April 2002, the alternate direction swing patent underwent reexamination and all 4 patent claims were found to be invalid and cancelled in July of 2003. I hope they fired the original examiner who granted this idiotic patent for incompetence!