It's time patent trolls were put out of business

IN A recent episode of HBO's sitcom Silicon Valley, a lawyer tries to extort money from a struggling startup by threatening to sue it for patent infringement.

The troll, who understands nothing about the underlying technology, owns a patent so broad as to be unenforceable, but knows that the victims of his perfectly legal extortion scheme lack the financial resources to fight him in court.

A recent research paper by economists Ian Appel, Joan Farre-Mensa and Elena Simintzi shows that the show's humorous scenario isn't that far from real life.