How Apple and Microsoft Armed 4,000 Patent Warheads

I find it interesting that Apple/RIM/Microsoft are backing a company like Rockstar. They couldn't buy the patents themselves because they'd be less valuable, as using them exposes the company to counter-action, so instead they all set up a shell company to act as a patent troll on their behalf. Doesn't this have any traceability? Surely they are business regulations in place to stop this kind of crazy behaviour? If not then there certainly should be.

The idea behind patents was (essentially) to protect the inventor against being ripped off by those slower-moving but richer than he. They have become exactly the opposite: tools of the rich and the powerful to extract oligopoly rent from those without patents of their own to 'fight back'.

It is a completely absurd situation. We would be better off without them.

So Rockstar is a patent troll like IV, and they're just waiting for a company to step on a patent landmine to go after them. Hopefully they will be involved in a high-profile case soon, so the Courts or the Government can shut them and others like them down.