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A couple of cases represent the trouble of characterizing a patent troll who pays the price to retain a patent without ever using whatever it was that was patented. How about we say that a noteworthy car maker contributes a few million dollars adding to another diesel motor. Along the way, it secures 50 licenses on the innovation, however then chooses not to seek after the diesel motor and rather concentrates on half breed motors. A couple of years pass and one of its rivals discharges a diesel motor utilizing the licensed innovation. Is our auto producer a troll on the off chance that it seeks after the contender for patent encroachment, only in light of the fact that it didn’t deliver the diesel motors?

Another issue case that ordinarily emerges is colleges, which are petri dishes of advancement that infrequently make any items. Most colleges do, notwithstanding, have an innovation exchange office that secures patent assurance for developments. On the off chance that a college sees an organization utilizing its protected innovation and methodologies the organization looking for an eminence, is the college a troll that ought to be rebuffed?

Also, a third class is likewise troublesome. Picture a little business that develops another innovation and secures a patent on it. Later, a multinational partnership begins utilizing the innovation. The little business doesn’t have a huge number of dollars to bring a patent encroachment claim so it offers its patent to an outsider who has enough cash to bring the claim. In this David and Goliath situation, little business David required a sling, and the outsider gave it. The outsider may be in the matter of simply gathering promising licenses yet enactment assaulting the outsider patent gatherer hurts the little business and smothers advancement.

Downtown you can still see banks the way they were meant to be: impressive, sturdy, dignified buildings that remind you with a low voice, speaking from every granite column, from every marble counter, from every cast-iron vault: your money is safe here. It is safe in the hands of respectful, civilized, experienced professionals.

These days our money is scattered all over town, with a satellite branch for every bank on every block, each one with all of the elegance and stature of your average 7-11. We have traded the polished, reassuring permanence of the downtown bank for a hundred flimsy Quik-E-Banks, all to save walking a few extra blocks. There’s actually a Chase branch opening in my linen closet next week. I’d use it, but their ATM fees are a bitch.

Maybe I could learn to appreciate the convenience of the storefront bank, if only the service within them weren’t spread so thin. The courteous, professional, knowledgeable staff of full-time tellers who learned your name, greeted you kindly, and treated your money conscientiously has gone the way of the buffalo nickel. These days, you’re lucky if the part-time clerk even bothers to give you a half-assed “good morning.” It’s reassuring that nowadays intelligent, smartly-dressed, business-minded women have options at financial institutions that reach beyond the teller’s window. But it pains me to see that we’ve done no better at replacing them than an ever-rotating cast of slackjawed college dropouts in polo shirts.

I work in downtown Chicago these days, in the shadow of one of the city’s largest banks. The bank and the building have one name, the plaza it’s is still called by another bank’s name, and the small clock tower in the plaza bears the insignia of yet another long-since assimilated bank. I can hail a cab home out front just across the street from another bank that’s on maybe its third or fourth name.

I keep waiting for the day where they all merge into a single, monolithic entity. It’ll just be called “Bank” and their slogan will be “Bank: We charge you to use your own money.” Or maybe “Bank: It’s us or the mattress, bitch.”

Should save us a block or two when going in to make a deposit, though.