It's complicated -- I used to feel like you did but then I worked on a patent search engine and learned a lot about it.
Many patent trolls are really trolls. But being a "non-practicing entity" doesn't make you bad. For instance an academic research group might invent a technology that is useful in making microchips but only a few companies are capable of benefiting from that so that research group/Uni is a "non-practicing entity" that can license the tech fairly to one of those companies.
that are marketed under the "as seen on TV" brand. The company behind that licenses patents from inventors and they feel like they can invest in marketing and development because the patent holds back cheap competition.
In the case of that hose, competitors figured out other ways to make a hose that does something similar and you see a common scenario -- that page boasts about all the improvements they've made in the product, starting out with one patent helps them lead in a competitive market in which they've gotten many more patents to improve their product.
That's a fair point, and part of why I'm asking here, I'm not sure what the perfect answer is, but it should definitely not harm genuine inventors. Maybe some level of scrutiny such as, if you bought a patent from another entity who never built it, and there's no evidence you're building it? I don't know why anyone who would buy a patent and then only sue for violations would be a good faith patent owner in any way.
Think about what allows the toxic management company to thrive, eg, by becoming the principal (part of it is an identity problem I pointed to in sibling comment)
The garden hose example is a good faith scenario but maybe it still feels icky to you because they arent the "genuine inventors" :)
How are they going to prove that? Put up a diff tree of their improvements?
That's an example of tripartite problem (innovators/IP-arbitrageurs/commercializers) that's easy to oversimplify to a bipartite one (NPE vs "practicians") by inadequate notation
Many patent trolls are really trolls. But being a "non-practicing entity" doesn't make you bad. For instance an academic research group might invent a technology that is useful in making microchips but only a few companies are capable of benefiting from that so that research group/Uni is a "non-practicing entity" that can license the tech fairly to one of those companies.
You often see things like this garden hose
https://pockethose.com/pages/copper-head?variant=44089443483...
that are marketed under the "as seen on TV" brand. The company behind that licenses patents from inventors and they feel like they can invest in marketing and development because the patent holds back cheap competition.
In the case of that hose, competitors figured out other ways to make a hose that does something similar and you see a common scenario -- that page boasts about all the improvements they've made in the product, starting out with one patent helps them lead in a competitive market in which they've gotten many more patents to improve their product.