I don't want to fix up my car, clean it, stage photos, or meet potential buyers for test drives, so I sell it to a company specialized in those activities.

In the same way, an inventor may not care to advertise his technology, negotiate licensing deals, or file lawsuits to enforce his rights, so he sells it to a company specialized in those activities.

Further, the existence of a secondary market gives inventors strictly more options than they'd have without one. Maybe no one will care to license a particular patent. Maybe it will be a long time before anyone cares. Maybe the business intending to use the patent didn't pan out, and the inventor doesn't really care about licensing it. The market can price in these concerns and still holder an immediate, nonzero payoff when he wants it. The fact that IP can have value even in bankruptcy probably makes investments and loans flow more freely to small businesses and startups.

The real problem is that anyone has an exclusive right to obvious and natural arrangements of software constructs, i.e. that the patent exists at all. The fact that it's a patent troll vs. the original inventor asserting those rights is merely an example of economic specialization.

The meta-problem is that patents are based on the idea that R&D is expensive and commercialization-minus-R&D is cheaper. But in our industry, ideas are cheap and execution at scale is hard.

There are certainly people who defend the concept of intellectual property in general and patents in particular as ethical. I don't agree but it's arguably even a mainstream position. I imagine at least some of them would argue that patent trolling is at least a necessary evil to achieve the greater good of intellectual property laws. I can think of a number of at least somewhat defensible arguments why patent trolls are on net a good thing if you accept the basic flawed premise that intellectual property is ethical.

What I mean is there are people who claim that they don't see anything wrong with patent trolling. For those people, it's not a moral problem, it's just a side effect of the way IP law work.

At the same time, from a certain perspective, F2P games aren't much different than complicated video poker games. They're designed to encourage in game purchases, and to hook people so they keep playing.

Edit I didn't read far enough ahead before replying and I see there is in fact a very interesting discussion about the ethics of F2P gaming, that this particular gaming company is actually having and welcoming that discussion and seems to be at least very interested in making the right calls about it. So I downvoted your comment, because it's a bit ridiculous that a comment simply stating "well you're wrong because it is objectively wrong" somehow got voted above people actually having a proper discussion about the topic oldcynic asked about. /Edit

No, there's no such thing as "objective morality". There just isn't, and that's by definition. Frankly I'm a bit sad that jlarocco actually got downvotes for that.

You meant to say something different, and what would have been more useful if you had been a little clearer on what you actually meant to say, instead of your claim that patent trolls are objectively immoral--which is factually untrue.

I'm going to guess (and I might be wrong because you weren't that clear) what you tried to say is that you consider the wrongness of patent trolls to weigh significantly more than the wrongness of facilitating addictiveness of f2p gaming and/or premium currencies. Except you didn't give any reason why, except stating that it is objectively so. So how was that for usefulness?

And neither oldcynic nor jlarocco stated that patent trolling is ethical (which is actually a loaded question).

There's actually all sorts of arguments you can bring to discuss about oldcynic's point. Such as by analogy of a heroin dealer complaining about the sad state of healthcare in the USA (and however you'd feel about that). Or, you know, how HN is a forum of entrepeneurs so topics like patent trolling goes closer to the hearts of some here, while the OP probably wouldn't dare to bring their sob-story to a support-forum for gaming addicts.

And that is called having a discussion. Not calling one side of the point "like, just your opinion man" (subjective) and the other not (objective).

I'd love to read such a discussion actually, because I'm a little torn on the topic as well. I'm not at all sure whether I should care about a gaming company making profits with in-game currency, while it's an open secret in this business that you can't really make it without actively exploiting the weakness and addictions in the human psyche (similarly to network security, not everyone is equally vulnerable, just because you won't fall for it doesn't mean the sweet rich old lady across the street knows how to install a firewall and not click on the whatsits).

On the other hand, we (on this forum) all (seem to) agree that patent trolling is a bad thing. Still doesn't mean it's objectively so.