Why do we cling to this idea of patent trolls?

The patent system is the problem. None of this should have been granted but when you really try to define what software patents are novel it becomes incredibly difficult.

Just because you think this is trivial does not mean a layperson does.

Is an encryption algo novel? What's novel about it, it's just a hashing function with some new parameters.

The reality is, software patents are a joke and should be dropped entirely. Copyright is enough protection for most use cases.

Aka, don't hate the player, hate the game. And ideally, do something to fix it instead of complaining about "trolls" as if that'll ever fix the issue.