I was going to respond by playing devil's advocate and defending Ric and Uniloc. But a quick glance at their site proves you absolutely right. Here are some gems:
Uniloc's surprising honesty:
>And it fits our straightforward development model. Look at many ideas. Pick an outstanding one. Patent it. Commercialize it. Reap the rewards.
Uniloc's vast knowledge of technology:
>After all, Bell Labs did develop some fairly transformative technology like radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser and the UNIX programming language.
These are the same people whose patent claim addresses Mojang's well-known product Mindcraft, so a little illiteracy obviously isn't costing them much on the bottom line.
I find it odd that lawyers, who use language to such an exacting degree they have effectively created their own dialect of English, have so much factually wrong information written on their own site.
They create a market for patents which benefits everyone who invents something and patents it. If your startup has a useful patent then (even if you never use the patent) your company is made more valuable because trolls like this exist. Investors will consider how much that patent is worth on the market when valuing your company.
And how would you implement a system that prohibits patent troll behavior? Only the original inventor gets to own the patent? Only people using the technology are allowed to own the patent? Define "using." What if I invent something truly novel and would rather license it to established players instead of bringing it to market myself?
The usual counter-argument is meant to go that companies full of smart people should be able to think up clever inventions all day and sell them to people who know how to build and market them. I'm not sure it really pans out in reality, though.
