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David, I think you and I were both smelling the same funk from over there at Blue Meme's pro-patent rant. While I'm hesitant to call anyone a term like "patent troll" without more evidence (since he did say he was a defendent, not a plaintif--who knows), otherwise he really fits the profile of the guys that abuse patents and even the Courts have been dismissing as trolls. Xerox is a good example too -- that specific case I wasn't aware of, but everyone knows the history of Silicon Valley has been all about building upon each other's innovations and not clogging the courts with patent complaints. That's why people in tech are hating Apple a lot for turning litigious against Samsung, who knows how far the patent war could go when there are so many conflicting, overlapping patents that tech companies have. Hadn't caught that paper by Boldrin/levine (surprised it hasn't come up on my radar faster actually), thanks for the link. Oh and regarding copyright nazis in digital media -- just remember how much artists were hating on YouTube's copyright violations -- only to learn that illegal videos on youtube were driving serious traffic and popularity of the products of artists -- now EVERYONE can go on YouTube and listen to basiclaly any song they want, for free, and yet the music industry survives, and thrives because they use youtube to generate revenue and to generate buzz -- amazing isn't it? (not if you understand patents :P) Instead of having a state sanctioned monopoly these copyright holders should just embrace their own marketing and business potential for a product, because that is what's going to win a battle in the market, not a threat of imprisoning people who download a movie or song. Find ways to engage that consumer, for free, online, ad-based revenue, whatever (GET CREATIVE, f*cking businesses) and engage in some level of price discrimination where you get ad-based revenue for provision of media to those who can't afford to deliver an ad-free more convenient copy somewhere. that would extract by far the most surplus...but alas there's market actors colluding (cable companies, tv networks) to suppress this sensible developmnet in the media. it's partly because of dumb copyright monopolies, and partly due to market collusion (arguably illegal, depending on how you want to interpret some of the laws we have against anti-competitive activity) - Chris Engel