This is really the gist of it.
While I'm sure that every member of HackerNews would read the article first, clarification may help our visitors who decide to skim the comments =)
In the first sentence, he seems to be saying a patent troll might be suing someone who has never heard of the troll's technology and they haven't produced a commercial product. The "they" in that sentence seems to imply he is speaking of the one being sued. If they, meaning the party being sued, has not created a commercial product that infringes on the troll's technology, it begs the question of why are they being sued?
Plus, a patent doesn't have to vague for it to be considered part of a patent troll. It can be a very clear and precise patent on something so glaringly obvious that no one else bothered to patent it because a normal thinking person wouldn't think it should be granted in the first place.
> It can be a very clear and precise patent on something so glaringly obvious that no one else bothered to patent it because a normal thinking person wouldn't think it should be granted in the first place.
In practice this is a lesser problem, because a very clear and precise patent on something really obvious will be quite easy to invalidate using prior art. It's not free to defend such suits, but cheap enough where a nuisance settlement isn't particularly attractive. It's the vague patents that aren't clearly applicable to your particular problem domain that are the greatest concern, because litigating the meaning of those patents can be very expensive.
Company A has a patent, Company B has a product that doesn't use said patent, Company A sues Company B anyway?
Or are you saying that Company B has a product that they think is original by having never seen the patent beforehand?
I'm just getting stuck on the idea of being in a patent lawsuit over a product, or no product I guess, that doesn't involve the company being sued for the patent in question.
As for the second point, a clear and precise patent on something obvious would be easy to use. You simply offer to settle and/or license cheaper than it would be to fight it in court, pushing the idea that invalidation is not easy and not common. It would pay off if you think of the long tail.
The vague patents are for going after the big targets.