[harrison_clarke]

if a company sells the patent to a "troll", but retains a license as part of the deal, i would consider that to be working as intended. it's basically a way to outsource the legal protection

if a company sells it to a broker, and it eventually gets traded or licensed to a company that develops it, i'd also consider that working as intended

if patents keep finding their way to companies that have no intention to either develop it themselves, or license it to others, and keep suing companies that do develop things, i'd consider it a failure of the system

pharma patents get traded to non-developers all the time, but pharma patents mostly do their job of incentivizing innovation. there's still flaws, but the troll problem isn't a big issue in that space

[petesergeant]

> no intention [to] license it to others

The companies that are doing the suing here are — as I understand it here — are suing to force a licensing deal.

[harrison_clarke]

the issue is that there's no knowledge transfer from the patent holder to the developer, in these cases. there's no causal link from the patent to the development

the (forced) licensing deal comes after the development, and hinders it. and it's not to protect development of a related idea, either