Apple's patent insanity infects Silicon Valley (patent trolls go nuclear)

Spotting a patent troll used to be easy. They were the ones who sold lawsuits, not products. Companies like Intellectual Ventures picked up the title "patent troll" from critics as they went beyond buying and licensing patents to suing companies like Dell and Hewlett-Packard over claimed violations.

That is, until the industry started to adopt the behavior of the patent trolls, looking to intellectual property lawsuits and licensing to fuel revenues. Microsoft is perhaps the most famous of these patent aggressors, but Redmond largely learned its craft at the feet of IBM. Now the patent problem is so widespread that even companies like Apple and Amazon are starting to look like trolls.

Yes, that's right. If Apple and Google succeed, we'll be left with BlackBerrys. Again. Heaven help us.

Rumour has it that Apple had spent $100m on just one lawsuit against HTC. Not only did Apple get essentially nothing from this suit, but think of how valuable that $100m would have been in Jony Ive's hands?