> The Wright brothers were the original patent trolls

Edison was not only a patent troll, but was besieged by other patent trolls. He spent much of his career in court defending his patents and trying to overturn others.

Do you even know what a patent troll is? Edison actually invented many items that he patented and defended against infringers (and he trod on a few others patents). Usually a patent troll has never registered a patent. He buys patent rights to any and all things he can get very cheaply, He then has all the claims assessed to see if there is a fragment that applies to any company that uses that technology - and writes a demand letter for infringement fees. They often ask for $10,000 to $25,000 and many companies who are faced with hiring lawyers and spending $500,000 in even a winning defence - choose to pay it. The trolls live on these fees. I could live well on one letter a month. The troll has low costs, a copy of Word on a computer abd a printer + postage and often send hundreds of letters a day. Read this.

https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?company=newegg

I used the term in the sense of the article I replied to said:

> They would file and stretch their patents to try and cover what others invented.

It's definitely what Edison did and what others tried to do to him. Nothing the Wrights did in regard to patents was new.

This is a disputed claim according to your wikipedia link

It is true!!. A dispute that had no basis. If they had asked reasonable royalties it would have been OK, but they refused to licence many makers - yet they failed to make their own planes in volume for related bad business reasons. Did you read where the early USAF on that era was forced to buy French a dn British planes due to the bad management by the Wrights

Yes, the Wrights were poor businessmen. That does not take away from their great success at flight. They still managed to become wealthy.

They needed to test and go further. They left 99% of the potential wealth on the table due to their greed. A proper management strategy would have led to progress and volume production. Instead the Wright patants were so difficult or expensive to licence that they were allowed to lapse = bad failure mode...