Democrats choose trial lawyers over Silicon Valley

[Beet]

Patent trolling is absurd. I recently heard about a California company that lobbied the state government to require that a certain technology be used by companies in a particular industry as a matter of regulation. After the regulation passed, the company then "discovered" that it had a patent on that technology and sued all of its competitors for royalties. There are other companies whose sole purpose for existence is to buy up as many patents as possible and then sue small companies trying to innovate. Many times, the "patents" wouldn't hold up in court, however the small companies are too scared by a ominous-sounding letter threatening a lawsuit and massive fines that they agree to pay up just to avoid legal fees.

[Beet]

There's definitely ageism in SV. One of my aunts has worked for just about every technology company in the Valley for the last 20 years and she said she had to retire because at her last job, at Google, the kids would make fun of her for not understanding the abbreviations they used, e.g., they never communicated with each other using complete words. When she tried to ask the supervisor the meaning of an email, he got mad. After that she knew it was her time to go. Fortunately for her she was near retirement age anyway.

That's not the only industry this sort of thing happens in, of course. It's just that SV gets a lot of attention because it's success level is through the sky. I'm sure the Wall Street boiler rooms of the go-go Clinton/Bush years were just as bad.