Intellectual Ventures Files Patent Suit Against Motorola Mobility (The Wall Street Journal)

What we have here is government receiving payments from connected firms in order to establish special privileges in the market place.

You document what you want to have a monopoly over, get lawyers to vet over it, submit it to the government, and then pay your fees to government and then the government will use it's police state to ensure your profitability. Of course there are special rules and such because the government prefers to maintain and illusion of legitimacy in it's actions.

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It's a modern form of Syndicalism.

In case you didn't know what that is, most European folks probably have a decent idea, but it's a system were you have the 'producers' control the economic system.

The leftists tended to believe that the 'workers' were the 'producers' so they fight to make the workers the controlling factors through trade unionism and such. The rightists tend to believe that the large capitalists were the big producers and wanted them to be in charge of a 'syndicalist' system.

Roughly 90 years ago a group of rather pragmatic bunch* of leftists in Italy managed to politically please both types of groups (and thus get their help to take over the democratic government via legal elections) by simply making both types of groups controllers of the economy. They decided to have both groups representing both types help run the government through committee process.

*(pragmatic in the sense they were not driven by religious-like ideological theories like the communists were)

This became known as the Italian Corporative state, among other things. During it's heyday it was lauded as a huge step forward. It embraced all groups and loved religion, as long it was approved by the state. It was highly respected by people like Winston Churchill for it's ability to bring order out of chaos. It was admired by Franklin Roosevelt for it's highly progressive economy and public works. And a historically significant group of people in Germany thought it was a fantastic way to run a country.

In modern America the state is effective evolved along very similar lines; abet in a much more awkward and slower manner then the Italians did. Not so much clubbing. Tear gas and electrical weapons are cleaner. Plus maintaining a huge percentage of the population in prisons keeps is a great way to generate money and political favors from regional economies.

Although this time around they added a third group of 'producers' to help run the economy: 'Lawyers and Idea men'. Since, you know, the vast majority of politicians in the USA are lawyers. They naturally hold themselves and their profession in very high esteem. They are not going to cut themselves out of the loop for the sake of some outmoded labor vs owner dogma. Thinkers are just as important as accountants and factory workers.

Very pragmatic group of people, you know.