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Ten States Pass Anti-Patent-Troll Laws, With More To Come
An anonymous reader writes "With patent reform stalled in the Senate, many states have decided to take up the issue themselves. 'As states kicked off their legislative sessions this winter, lawmakers responded to the threats against small businesses by writing bills that would ban "bad faith patent assertions" as a violation of consumer-protection laws. The bills target a specific type of patent troll: the kind that sends out vaguely worded letters demanding licensing fees. The thousands of letters sent out by the "scanner trolls" at MPHJ Technology are often brought up as a case-in-point. The new laws allow trolls that break rules around letter-writing to be sued in state court, either by private companies they've approached for licensing fees, or by state authorities themselves.'"
You are absolutely WRONG. Patents, copyrights and trademarks were well known at the time of the constitution and only on Slashdot would you get modded insightful for such bullshit. It is called intellectual property because they are property rights, legal and granted property rights. They are referred to in the legal world as intangibles, but you don't care about actual law and the constitution.