system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Patent Trolls

For some reason this isn't clicking with me, who's the good guy and who's the bad guy in a situation like this? is there even a good and bad guy? The picture that keeps coming to mind is that guy who has that really general patent on console controllers.
gpt
First off there never is a bad guy or a good guy only people. And in this case people abusing a legal system, and people getting screwed over by the former.

So a patent is a contract between a person/company and society. You keep inventing cool stuff and we promise not to copy you unfairly without paying you.

This is essential in the pharmaceutical industry where a new drug will take years and millions even possibly BILLIONS of dollars to make.

So a company Pfizer invents a new drug, now for a period of time (seven years / ten years?) only they can make sell that drug. During that time they have to make back the money that they spent on inventing the drug. After that time anyone can make that drug without paying Pfizer, so the price of drugs suddenly goes down.

So patent laws are good to make sure that companies have incentive to make new cool stuff. And patent wearing off is also important so eventually everyone can afford these new cool stuff that was invented. If patent laws were too strong and never wore off, then Pfizer could make one drug and sell it for a very high price and make loads of money and not bother to ever make any other drugs.

Now a patent troll is someone who buys a company that owns a patent that may be too broad or badly worded. E.g. if someone in the early fifties patented the idea of two computers communicating with each other (it doesn't matter the type of computer or what language they computers are using two computers talking to each other), at the time it seemed reasonable it was a new and innovative idea and the inventor needs credit for it, but some ends up with this patent and that company goes out of business and a patent troll buys that company.

Now the patent troll can sue basically anyone who invents pretty much any piece of software. They won't sue someone who is playing in their basement because they won't get money out of them, and they won't sue Sony or Microsoft because they won't win the court case. But they will sue start up companies and small businesses, the real innovators of the industry.

This is especially bad in the software industry because:

A) It is changing so fast that something innovative today is standard practice next year.

B) Patent lawyers know the law and don't know much about computers and software and programming languages.

C) Often a general process gets a patent like "computers talking to each other" or "a device that controls a computer" instead of the specific software and hardware that has actually been invented.

D) More than 50% of patents are software patents.

Patent law is essential for some industries, but it only stagnates and prevents innovation in the computer industry. And that it is why it should be reformed or abolished.