I worked for a startup that had as main investor a company called InterTrust. Our office was inside their building.
InterTrust was a patent portfolio that belonged to Sony and Philips. All they did was sue people. One day they were able to sue Apple on some stupid patent, and there was much rejoicing at the office.
So sad that we solved the problem of knowledge scarcity, and because of greed we need to add it back artificially.