The cost of patent trolls | Felix Salmon

I love This American Life’s investigation into patent troll Nathan Myhrvold and his company Intellectual Ventures. You should go read — or listen to — the whole thing, but in a nutshell, they explored what happened if they took Intellectual Ventures at its word. IV pointed TAL to an inventor called Chris Crawford — a man with a patent which he sold to IV. Inventors! Getting paid!...