Swarthout’s Reviews > Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It? > Status Update

"the example of US company Unwired Planet is an instructive one to begin with....a 'patent troll': a company that exploits patents not by producing the patented product or using the patented process, but solely by licensing its patent rights and/or enforcing those rights against alleged infringers."

Consider the example of patentable pharmaceutical attributes....In the 1990s, the list extended protection in relation to range of use, methods of treatment, mechanism of action, packaging, delivery profiles, dosing route, regimen and range, drug combinations, screening and analytical methods,drug chirality,biological targets and field of use

"Economic rent, not food, is Subway’s business: it owns and constantly finetunes an asset in the form of the concept of the Subway restaurant, and what such a restaurant should look and feel like and offer to its customers; and it sells privileged access to that concept to those who want to mobilize it."